The Heir
by Raquel
Summary: COMPLETE! Josephine has lived her whole life without knowing who her father is, but gets a rude shock when he shows up on Knockturn Alley. Can a girl with a truly evil father ever be happy?
1. Default Chapter

**Serpentigena **

**Chapter 1: Knockturn Alley**

Knockturn Alley is a place that few ever go for a good reason. The long and twisted cobblestones are full of a hodgepodge of shops, ranging from more innocent goods to the deadliest of poisons and the rarest torture devices. There are shops that sell things that no one should have: shrunken heads and the hot brain of a cat that will make you invisible if you eat it; the pelts of centaurs and bits and pieces of the human body, all bundled up in parcels with brown paper and white string.

The people there can be as unsavory as the goods they sell. Hags and vampires walk freely here, alongside Dark witches and wizards whose weary eyes dart from side to side, watching for spies. There are spies, and spies who spy on the spies, and if there is a whistle and someone is dragged off the street into one of the many blind corners, it is highly unlikely that they will live long enough to scream, let alone tell what they shouldn't have seen.

There were 'newbies', witches and wizards new to Knockturn Alley. They were the jumpiest, their eyes roving constantly in the fear that someone would grab them and they would die. Next were the regulars, who either had the misconception that they were invincible or were strange and withdrawn. The difference between the latter and the former was as simple as whom the Spies's Spies, or the SS, had questioned, and who had escaped the close watch.

Lastly were the 'Old bones'. Charcoal Sarah was one of these, an urchin who had spent much of her life on her street corner, avoiding the law of the Ministry and abiding the laws of the underworld. To most it seemed like she had been there forever, for Sarah had lived in Knockturn Alley for seventy-four years. She was old, her skin falling into creases and pleats on her face. The strong muscles and bones that had made her beautiful in her youth had now relaxed, leaving only her sharp black eyes and the firm set of her jaw.

She was thin and slouched, her yellowing canvases propped up on the barrels of the vendor next door. True to her name, Charcoal Sarah had spent most of her life sketching Knockturn Alley. There were sixty canvases with her now, and thousands more that she had sold for the meager pennies she could squeeze from the buyers. The drawings were worth every penny: After seventy-odd years of practice, her skill had gotten close to photographic. It showed, in the dust that suffused her garments, in the fingers that had gone black at the tips and the fingernails that stood out a garish yellow among her spotted gray flesh.

Pretty she was not. Sarah was, however, one of the oldest Old Bones on Knockturn Alley. That gave her enough prestige to get through the days without unnecessary hassle.

It was Emily 'Sweetfingers' Martin that found her first, before the morning mists had lifted from the cobblestones. Emily was in her forties, buxom and trim even as her own skin began to slacken. "Hey thar," she drawled. "SS awake yet?" Emily's curious accent, a clash of Southwestern drawl and clipped British, betrayed her mixed heritage.

"The SS never sleeps," Sarah replied, smudging a shadow into blurry perfection. "They watched me all last night."

"Even with the fog." It was not a question. Emily sighed and leaned again the wall, crossing her arms over her chest. "They're watching now."

"But not listening." Sarah began on the long lines of Emily's robes. "I won't have one of their foul snoopers near me." She smudged and sketched, her black eyes narrowed to arrowhead-slits in her face. "Nor their little elves creeping underfoot and asking questions. I killed the last one. Damn thing nearly ruined a week of drawings." She used two quick flicks of the charcoal to indicate her friend's slitted eyes.

Emily stayed still. "Are you drawing me?" The woman was used to her older friend's frequent impromptu sketching, and knew better than to move until she was allowed.

Sarah nodded, glancing up to put the finishing touches on Emily's long hair. With a quick smudge of dust she caught the shadow underneath the curl that fell across her friend's forehead.

Emily sighed and relaxed against the bricks. "You see the Newbie in here a few hours ago?"

"I see everything in this Alley."

"He looked pretty calm."

"Buy anything?"

"Nope."

"Probably a Death Eater."

"They usually are."

"Yeah," Sarah grunted. With a flourish, she signed the bottom. "Not bad," she admitted. "You should model, Emily."

Emily glanced over the old woman's shoulder. "I used to. Got pregnant, got thrown out."

"Pity."

"Yeah." Emily left to her own private street corner, in front of the Hotel Noire.

The next visitor was Toad, an Auror who had been left to die at the hands of Voldemort. He had twisted off Toad's right leg and then left him alone to bleed to death. Toad had cried out for help for days, but no one came back to see if he was alive—neither Aurors nor Death Eaters. Toad was now an avid hater of both the Ministry of Magic and the Death Eaters, and stumped around with his crutch cursing everyone. He was white-haired and young-faced; would have been tall if he could stand up straight. His yellow-green, slightly protruding eyes had earned him his nickname.

"Curses upon the Ministry. May they be raped with wasps' nests' and dragged through nettles," he grumbled, leaning against the wall Emily had vacated. 

"Lovely, Toad. Is that how you speak to Grandmother?" asked a younger girl who had been standing behind Sarah. "You should at least say ma'am at the end."

"The young who know much about courtesy and use it little should mind their own business," Toad retorted. "Don't you have somewhere to be, Josephine?"

Josephine shrugged. She was young for an Old Bone, but she had been born in Knockturn Alley and lived there for all of her life. She was Gypsy-looking, with dark hair and exotic blue eyes. Only a thin white scar that rain from her hairline to the base of her nose and over her left eye flawed her parchment skin. Her skills lay in the art of poisons and brews, though she had never attended Hogwarts or any other school. The owls of Hogwarts do not enter Knockturn Alley. Had Josephine attended Hogwarts, she would have done well. As it was, she was the most disreputable potion brewer on Knockturn Alley. She liked it.

"Toad has a wicked tongue, Josephine," Sarah replied. "For all."

"All but you, Grandmother," Josephine retorted. "What news, Toad? New Death Eaters? Any more SS victims?"

Toad licked his thin lips and drummed his fingers together. "The SS got two more, one of them's one of those stupid kids the Aurors hire as undercover agents. They really aren't much good, always getting caught. This one got freed, but they'll never come back to Knockturn Alley." Toad murmured a short curse on Aurors and continued. "The other was that old lady, Sepporah? You know, the midwife? She's a spy for the Ministry. Or should I say was? Anyway, she's not going to be doing any more delivering."

Charcoal Sarah nodded. "Knew she was, but she was decent sort. Plus, I did enough flattering drawings of her to keep us safe. She never told the Ministry nothing about us."

"Good!" Josephine kissed her knuckle. "I could be in Azkaban if she talked."

"We all could, girlie. Some of us is just smarter, that's all."

"Shut up, Toad. One day I swear I'll poison your mead."

"They'll getcha for that, too."

Sarah finished her sketch and cast an appraising glance over it. With a little shadowing and some slight modifications, she could pass it off as a lover's spat. Some art fanatic would pay for that. She smudged Toad's outline so that his missing leg was less evident, and darkened the defiant line of Josephine's jaw. Yes, this one had real potential. It might sell for more than a dollar—maybe some sucker would pay a good twenty or so. Sarah nodded and smudged, the bickering of the girl and cripple a soft background noise as she worked.

~

Severus Snape stalked down the street. He never really walked normally—he enjoyed the powerful feeling of swooping down the street, like he could fly if he walked a little more forcefully. In addition, the powerful stride covered his fear as he stalked the cobblestone lane of Knockturn Alley.

_It's stupid to fear something that doesn't exist,_ he thought to himself. _You know that the underground resistance here shorted out years before you were born._ But there was always something weird about the way people gathered in this place, the way that this woman watched him and this man watched the woman, and some just sat, watching everyone. Nothing went unnoticed but everything went unsaid. 

He pushed open the door of the rickety shop, the dim light of a streetlight filtering through the newspaper that covered the broken window. It was deceptively innocent looking inside, but a slight rotting smell that came from the thousands of bottles on the walls clearly said to Snape's nose that these were poisons, cleanly made and aged to perfection. Every one seemed to be in it's prime, but Snape knew that this could not be possible. The elderly man that sold the potions here could not possibly be three hundred years old, but these potions were. This shop had been founded five years before. It was a mystery nobody had solved—where did these perfect potions come from?

"I need supplies," he told the man who came to the counter. He was bent and twisted, one side of his spine curving grossly to the right and inwards, making each of his breaths a labored process.

"Name it, my gal'll find it," the man wheezed. His breath was foul and smelled of cheap booze.

"A half-pint of murderer's wash water, female if you have it, and another half of the blood of a virgin centaur." Snape held up a gold Galleon. The man's face lit up in a way that made Snape think of a long row of frothing glasses. "I can pay."

The shop owner's 'gal' returned almost instantaneously with the required bottles. She was tall and thin, her back plumb straight in juxtaposition to her boss's twisted stature. "Would you like to see them?" she asked. She was dirty; like everything else in the shop, but her face was classic and her blue eyes were startling in her tawny face.

"Certainly," Snape replied. The girl plucked the cap off the wash water and handed the bottle to him.

"That's a female, about thirty." 

Snape inhaled deeply and had to agree with the girl's guess. "Female, thirty-two. Probably not dead, though."

There was a reluctant nod from the girl. "The centaur's blood is in order. I cannot allow you to sniff that," she said. Her voice was slightly accented, a soft velvet purr. 

"It would cause bad business if I was to faint on your floor," Snape replied. He held out his hand with the sixteen Galleons he had been holding—the bare minimum for such items.

"To accept such a sum would disgrace the name of this shop," the girl said, placing a hand to her heart dramatically. "I will accept nothing less than forty Galleons five Sickles."

"These must be good items, to be so overpriced," Snape replied.

"The very best. There are neither impurities in the blood nor mildew in the water. Forty is a reasonable charge for high quality."

"The best at Diagon Alley sells for twenty-six," Snape pointed out.

The girl looked offended. "Diagon? You should never buy their goods! They salt the water and thin the blood! Their quality is a pustule compared to mine."

"Yours? A mere girl?" Snape allowed himself a decisive laugh. "I am three times your age and know quality when I see it!"

Her cheeks flushed. "With age come not wisdom but doddering wits and a frail body!" She raised the glass of murderer's wash water and waved it in his face. "Look closely, grandfather, for this is quality!"

"Twenty."

"Thirty-seven."

"Thirty-one galleons six."

"Done." He counted the money into her waiting palm, noticing that the girl counted it again before putting it in the cashbox. She tucked a long strand of hair back into her braid. "Would you like anything else?" she asked, her voice once again deceptively polite.

"Where did you train?" he queried. "It takes a skilled witch to know the age of the murderer, especially from the water." The girl's eyes widened, and she glanced downward. She cleared her throat.

"Well, thanks for your business, stranger," the man broke in, puffing smoke from a strange twisted pipe into Snape's face. "We'll be seeing you."

Snape was forced to back out of the shop, back onto the street. He watched the girl through a rip in the newspaper until a man bumped into him from behind.

"Whatcha starin' at?" he snarled. "Lil' Josephine?"

He sneaked one last glance through the papers. The girl's back was to him, the loose rounds of black hair hanging to her waist. "Josephine," he murmured, before striding off to the lighter end of the Alley, where Knockturn ended and Diagon began.

~

"I didn't like it, Grandmother," Josephine told Sarah, her hands wringing as she leaned against the wall. "Didn't like it one bit. He looked right through me—like you do, almost."

"An artist's gaze. I must meet this man."

"No!" the girl erupted. "I don't want to see him again! He's not fooled by all this Knockturn Alley hibber-de-jibber, he knows something more! About what really goes on in here." She bit her knuckle, blue eyes stormy above her fist. "It was frightening. Like having no skin." How could she describe the feeling of being looked at as if she were no more than an interesting shape, the curve of an eyebrow, the shape of her nose?

Charcoal Sarah nodded. "Aye, girl, aye." She bent forward to put the details on the drawing of Josephine's hands that she'd been working on. "Is that a scar on your left palm?"

Josephine looked down. "Yes. I think I tipped a vile once and tried to catch what was in it before it hit the floor." She made a motion like she was cupping her hand. "It was dragon's blood."

Sarah winced as she detailed the rippling white scar with charcoal dust. "Bet you never did that again."

"Nope."

"Lemme see your hands again, girl. My eyes aren't so keen anymore."

Obediently Josephine held out her hands, palm up. "Do you think he'll be back, Grandmother?"

"No. Unless..." Sarah looked up at Josephine and snickered, then howled with laughter. She banged her fist so hard on the chair she snapped her charcoal stick into three pieces. As suddenly as the outburst had begun, it ended. Sarah cleared her throat with a noise like a pepper grinder with rocks in it. "Other side of your hands, please."

"What was that?" Josephine asked, flipping her hands.

"Nothing. It's just a little surprising that nobody's hit on you before." Sarah delicately traced a knuckle onto her sketch. Toad, who had been lurking around the corner, cackled with merriment and did a little hopping dance, thumping his crutch against the ground as he pointed gleefully at Josephine. The girl retaliated by hooking her foot around his and jerking him to the ground, where they sat laughing hysterically until no one remembered why they had begun.

~

"Who are these people?" Albus Dumbledore asked, surveying the seven charcoal portraits before with interest. "It looks like three central people: a girl, a one-legged man, a grown woman. Why are they so significant?" Remus Lupin and his young assistant, Neville Longbottom, stood across from him. Neville's arms were full of yet more drawings.

"I'm not sure," Remus Lupin confessed. "There's an old woman who sells portraits on the corner. I was looking through her stock of drawings, and I noticed that these three people were just everywhere in them. Especially the cripple; the one who appears the least often is the grown woman." He ran his hands through his entirely gray hair. Though Remus was barely halfway through his fourth decade his hair was fast approaching white and his young face was pleated with fine lines around his eyes and mouth.

Dumbledore rested his chin in his hands. "This one," he said, tapping the canvas. "The hands."

It was a picture of someone's hands, badly scarred. It was actually three drawings on one canvas: the hands open, wringing, and the relaxed backs of the hands. "It was different. Most of the others were straight-out drawings, but this one stood out like a sore thumb," Neville chirped. He was a dark-haired young man with round blue eyes and a thin, slumping stance.

"No pun intended?" Albus smiled a little, gesturing at the poor condition of the hands. "That's an acid burn," he mused aloud, pointing at the rightmost hand. "And that's broken glass if I've never seen it."

Remus grunted in reply, picking up the next canvas. "This is one of the middle-aged woman. She's a prostitute by the Hotel Noir."

Dumbledore sorted through and pulled out one of the girl and an unrecognizable man. The man's back was to the viewer, but the girl's face was twisted in fury. The photographic detail left no doubt this was the girl from the other portraits. "This is our young Janie Doe?" 

Neville nodded. "Yes. And here's the cripple—his name's Toad. He's pretty well known. And the prostitute." Remus laid each one out in turn. 

"She's pretty," Dumbledore remarked blandly to the older man.

"I've given up on women, Headmaster," Remus replied, equally bland. "Especially the pretty ones."

"I know, Remus."

Dumbledore looked at the drawings and sighed. "Good work. Very good." Neville's ears went pink with pleasure. Dumbledore watched the pair as they left. It had been good of Remus to take on Neville after the boy graduated. Neville Longbottom was shy, quiet, and had grown up without either of his parents. They were both kept in St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies. When Neville was barely a year old an encounter with Voldemort had resulted in his parent's going insane. Remus was like a father to the younger man, and Neville was, surprisingly, one of the few people who could grow the plants for, and brew, Remus' Wolfsbane potion. 

_It works beautifully,_ Dumbledore thought. _If only all could go so well._


	2. Instant Charisma

Serpentigena Chapter 2: Instant Charisma 

Josephine kept her arms tucked tightly in the pockets of her patched dress as she walked back to the room she shared with Emily, her mother. It was really a walk-in-closet in a wealthy Dark Arts master's home. Josephine slept in it at night, and the Emily slept there after her shift at the Hotel. She nodded hello to the housekeeper and made her way to the closet, where she opened the door, climbed onto the bed, and closed the door behind her. Scrambling around until she felt her head hit the pillow, she reached for her wand. It had taken her three years to pinch enough Knuts together to go to Olivander's and buy her wand. Black ash and dragon heartstrings, nine and three-quarter inches.

"Lumos," she whispered, groping for the books she kept on the shoe rack under the cot. "Where is it?"

Reverently she drew out the sad-looking copy of _Most Potente Potions_ and flipped to the third page. "The Potion for Eternal Hunger," she read. With a rapt expression on her face, she committed the page to memory. Gently she turned the page, wincing as a large chunk of the half-rotten vellum fell to the pillow. "The Potion of Eternal Sleep."

That night she memorized most of the 'Eternal's': Sleep, Awareness, Hunger, Thirst, Loneliness, Itchiness and Uncertainty. She fell asleep murmuring 'corn syrup may be used as an acceptable substitute for…' and then her head dropped to the pillow.

It was morning when Emily shook her awake. "Get up," she muttered. "I wanna sleep, so you gotta move." The older woman's eyes were shadowed and her hair was mussed, and Josephine barely got off the bed before she collapsed onto it.

"Sweet dreams," Josephine muttered before gathering up her various books and stuffing them into a canvas bag. She knew what was in Emily's dreams: the first man who had ever raped her, throwing a gold Galleon to the broken body on the bed before stalking out of the room. She often spoke of his eyes: "They were red, like he'd been at the hash or the fairy dust. Cold eyes, and I still thank God I survived that night." That had been almost twenty years earlier but the details never escaped the prostitute's dreams. 

Josephine stopped at the rancid fountain at the end of the street to slick back her hair and scrub her face. She washed her hands and did her best to remove the worst of the stains from her dress. Then she picked up her bag and walked down to the end of the road, where the pavement turned white. Diagon Alley.

Her heart quickened. _Why do I fear this place? It's only a street, but its very _feeling _gives me chills._ She shivered and darted into the first shop on the right.

"Ah? Oh, hello little girl." The elderly man behind the counter of the book-rental shop blinked at her behind huge glasses. His face was small and shriveled like the rest of his body. "Come to return my books?"

"Yes," she replied. "And to check out new ones, please."

He clucked his tongue and took the worn copies that she laid on the counter. Josephine ignored his blank stare as she disappeared into one of the aisles of musty shelves. Standing on tiptoe, she tipped one of the rotting manuscripts down and deftly caught it before it hit the floor. The cloud of dust that rose as she opened the cover made her cough, and the title page had been torn out. The second page looked at though a large animal had bitten a hole in it, and all the pages after that were spotted with acid holes.

Sighing with regret, she pushed the book back into its spot and reached for its neighbor, ignoring the stream of dust and assorted grit that rained onto her face.

Remus Lupin watched her from a restaurant across the street, pretending to read a newspaper. He had been watching her since the day before. She definitely had the bravery thing down, living in Knockturn Alley, but when she had crossed the border of the two streets he had to wince. The girl's scraggly hair and filthy clothing, camouflage on Knockturn Alley, seemed magnified in the sparkling streets of Diagon. Remus observed the store until the girl left half an hour later, and once her ragged skirt was out of sight he stood and leisurely walked into the book rental shop.

"Hey there." 

"Well hi young man, how you doing? I'm fine! My books never have been in better condition or at a lower price! You look like you could use a book on medicine," the man babbled, moving away.

Remus consented to rent a book on medicine, and then asked casually as he paid the four Knuts "Who's that girl who was in here earlier?"

"Oh, that's Josephine. Lives down Knockturn way, don't say much. She likes them old Potion books. I ain't got much in the way of Potion books, but she's dirt poor." The man blinked solemnly. "Don't flash it around, but she don't look much like the other beggars down that street—they all looks most the same—most related!" he cackled to himself.

Remus nodded politely and left, leaving the book on the counter with his money. Four Knuts was a good price for the information just received.

~

"Her name is Josephine. I'd say she's fourteen or so, and she's got black hair." Remus rubbed the stubble on his chin and added, "The man says she rents books on Potions. I checked out what she returned, and everything she had is extraordinarily advanced. _Most Potente Potions _was one, and there were three or four others, each one on poisons, sleeping drafts, or advanced medicine. I looked through them, but I've never been anything but passable in Potions. You might have Snape look at the books." Remus scowled. "She slippery. I had a hard job keeping her in sight. She's got friends, too—that Toad character is practically guarding her. And that old woman who draws."

Dumbledore nodded. "Good, good. Anything else?"

Remus shrugged. "The old man in the shop muttered something about her 'looking different' than the other homeless on Knockturn. I checked afterwards, and he's right. They're mostly light haired and –eyed. Josephine is much darker. Almost Gypsy-looking." Neville came in with another stack of charcoals.

"Does she have any parents? Put those in the corner with the others, Neville."

"Not that I could find. It's hard to tell. They might be dead, or alive somewhere. Maybe they left her down there when she was small, maybe she was born there and her parents were killed."

"So nothing on her parents. Siblings?"

"The same."

Dumbledore stroked his chin, looking at the portrait of Josephine, her light eyes angry in her narrow face, the black hair that mystified Remus curling around her sharp chin and protruding cheekbones. She was beautiful, and yet haunted. "She definitely has a look to her—I know that face."

Remus turned the picture to face him. "I don't see any resemblances," he admitted after a lengthy pause. "The dark hair makes me think of James—but she's far too young for it to even be a possibility." He looked down. "I don't see anything. Neville?"

Neville walked over and scrutinized the drawing. He blinked once with his round blue eyes and shrugged. "Nothing."

"Nothing?" Dumbledore asked, and Neville nodded.

The werewolf nodded in agreement, and then flipped a page in his notebook. "Oh, and I found out more about the Spies spies—the ones that watch for Ministry spies. They've been watching Josephine too."

Dumbledore's blue eyes creased as he frowned. "Why?" The SS was an organization that the Ministry had been trying to stamp out for decades—since the Second World War—who had organized a resistance to the harsh new laws that affected the urchins of Knockturn Alley more than anyone else. 

"They won't say, but I think that they've noticed that she's different too. Under the dirt all the other beggars look nearly identical—blonde or brown hair, fair skin, and blue or gray eyes." Neville interjected. "The only other one that come close to being different is Toad, and that's because his eyes are green." Realizing he had just blurted into a conversation, he grew quiet once more.

The Headmaster nodded. "Excellent work, both of you. You can take the day off tomorrow—I'll have someone else watch Josephine."

"Thank you," Remus acknowledged, standing up as though his bones hurt. "Ask a woman to do it, if possible. I think our child is starting to catch on to the strange men following her." They exchanged good-byes, and Remus left to empty a strong sleeping draft and sleep away his illness. Neville followed with a soft offer to prepare the potion his friend needed.

Dumbledore sat in his office for many hours after Remus' departure, signing papers and answering several letters. Every so often he would look up and stare at the image of Josephine that Remus had bought that day: she leaned against a table, her cheek against the back of her hand. One lazy curl of black hair flipped over her forehead, and her eyes were half-closed. She radiated an aura of innocent sensuality; an instant charisma. 

The Headmaster closed his own eyes and rubbed the lids. "Innocent sensuality," he muttered. "Who else?" For he was sure beyond doubt that he had seen another with that same face, that same honest allure. The question was, who? He opened his eyes and cast another glance on Josephine's Mona Lisa smile.

"I know something you don't know," the picture whispered.

Time for bed, Dumbledore thought. He pushed back his chair. 

As if hearing a cue, Snape entered the room. "Medicine, Headmaster?" he asked, pointing to the beaker of steaming clear fluid he held.

"Of course, Severus," Dumbledore sighed, accepting the foul-smelling concoction. "How did it turn out this time?" he asked curiously after downing the glass.

"Excellently," the Potions master replied. "My ingredients were much better this time."

"Oh?" Dumbledore examined the beaker. "How so?"

Snape shook his head. "I got them from a strange old man on Knockturn Alley. The potions he sells are perfect."

"Perfect?"

"No errors. Everything is in perfect proportions, down to the last milligram. And all the potions that need aging to be prime have been aged—but the shop is barely five years old." Snape smirked. "Whoever made the concoctions I saw could give me a few lessons."

His silver eyebrows raised in silent appreciation of the skill of this unknown brewer. "I see," he commented. "Severus, take a look at these hands and tell me what you see." Dumbledore pushed one of the charcoals at his former student.

Instantly Snape blurted, "These are a potion-brewer's hands!" Blushing a faint crimson, he backtracked. "See, that's acid of some kind, and that's the marks from where a beaker exploded. The nails are bruised, and all over there's discoloration." Snape squinted at the middle set of hands. "These are a woman's hands."

Wordlessly Dumbledore passed him the more recent picture of Josephine, looking away from the Mona Lisa smile.

Snape looked at it for a second, then nearly dropped it as his eyes widened. "She—she looks like _him!_" he breathed. "Surely not—but how?" He took a firmer grip on the picture, his hands trembling. "How did this happen?"

"I don't know. We can't find her parents, she has no siblings we can find, and if those are her hands she's a very powerful witch. It falls together with an alarming reasonableness."

The potions Master tapped the goblet that had held Dumbledore's potion. "That old man who runs the store where I bought those supplies—she was there!" He pressed a hand to his forehead. "I am so blind."

"Severus, I need you to watch this girl tomorrow. Find her mother at all costs." Dumbledore moved towards his bedroom door. "Don't worry, I'll find someone to teach your class." After the Potions Professor left, he summoned a house elf. "Could you ask Neville Longbottom to come to my office, please?"

~

Josephine wasn't sure what exactly had tipped her off to the strange happenings outside the potions shop where she was working, but it started with the reappearance of the strange man who had come the day before. She had stayed in the back of the shop, but as usual she was forced to retrieve the necessary supplies. This time she didn't stop to bandy words, but left immediately. She told herself it was because the Potion of Eternal Forgetfulness needed to be turned, but she knew that it was because of the man.

He stayed at the counter for a few minutes, long enough for Josephine to watch him through the shelves. He was tall and very thin, his long dark hair pulled back into a sort of bunch at the base of his neck. His hands were pale and scarred, and Josephine spotted what looked like a dragon's blood burn on the back of his hands. Dark eyes examined the goods she had brought him with a skeptical glare.

Their conversation was too muted by the shelves for her to hear, so after he left she went back to her potion.

Josephine reflected on her own face, fingering her dark hair thoughtfully. _Father must have been dark_, she thought. Leaning over the brew to glimpse her face in the liquid, she noted very little resemblance to Emily. Emily was softness and luxury, a woman born to be a rich man's pampered wife. Her heart-shaped face and generous curves showed up little in Josephine, whose face was narrow and her curves sparing. 

She gave the potion another stir. It was a new one to her, the Potion of Eternal Sleep. Closing her eyes so that she could better see the memorized page, she reached for the next ingredient, a small sack of crushed rose petals. Josephine smiled as she added them to the thick pink liquid, careful to stop after six grams. One the petals had been stirred into nothingness, she spat into the pot. It turned clear instantly, looking no more harmless than water.

_There is nothing_, Josephine breathed,_ better than the glory of perfection._


	3. Run

**Serpentigena**

Chapter 3: Run 

Though Charcoal Sarah hated to admit it to herself, she was definitely worried about Knockturn Alley. She wanted a cigarette, something she hadn't craved in years, and wouldn't have turned down a stiff drink, either. Most of all, she felt the weight of her years as the young ran by, their faces set in patterns Sarah didn't understand. She frowned as she set down their faces in charcoal, the stiffly guarded expressions that baffled her artist's eyes.

"Toad?" she called. He was skulking around the back of the potions shop at this hour, waiting for Josephine, but she knew he could hear her. "Toad?"

There was no reply. Sarah shrugged. "Well," she muttered to herself, "Josephine's a pretty girl. We'll let Toad to his business." Even as she whispered her reassurances, she felt the itch of wrongness in her brain. Something was not right. She ground the tip of the charcoal to a fine point to put the whiskers on a cat drawing she had abandoned several days before. She began filling in the individual hairs in its tail. "This one's nice," she mumbled, half to herself. "A pretty kitty, eh Toad?"

There was no reply. Sarah shook herself. "Toad?" Her voice echoed. And _that_ was the thing. Her voice came back to her: "Too…?" Sarah looked up sharply.

Knockturn Alley was deserted. Every shop door was closed, every door latched and locked. The shutters were over the windows, the curtains drawn in the windows that did not have shutters. There was no one visible, no voices, not even the scuttle of the other creatures that lived in the sewers and basements of the various shops. Sarah put down her charcoal, suddenly aware of the hideous clatter it made in the silence.

Sarah made to move, and then the truth caught up to her—after ten years of sitting in the same chair, rarely moving to do anything else, she simply wasn't built for flight.

She began to sweat. In a last, desperate attempt at survival she flung her cape up over her head, hoping she would look only like a heap of rags. Her breath grew harsh as she pulled her legs up under her skirt. Within her smelly barricade, she waited.

Emily had been sitting on the end of the bed in room twenty-four at the Hotel Noire when she shivered. Her head came up from the comb she'd been using on her tangled blonde curls. Below her window there was a hush, then an outcry as everyone rushed to close up shop. With a grimace, she ran to her own windows and banged the shutters closed. The room darkened, and Emily swore as she stubbed a toe on the way to light her candles.

"No more customers today," she reflected. "I can go home." Then she frowned. _Should I tell Josephine the truth?_ she wondered to herself for what seemed like the millionth time. "No," she answered herself aloud. "She doesn't need to know the truth about either of her parents." _Or about me,_ she added silently.

Knockturn Alley was deathly quiet below, the loudest noise being the whistle of the wind through the twisted lane. Emily shivered again and crawled up onto the bed and drawing her skirts close around her feet. As she closed her eyes and leaned against the headboard, she heard the telltale sounds of footsteps below.

She bit down on her thumb to keep from whimpering in fear as the door to her room creaked open.

Josephine siphoned the Potion of Eternal Sleep into four separate containers, careful not to breathe in the fumes. With deft fingers she corked three of them, then dipped a paintbrush into the fourth. She focused on the steady motions of her hand as she painted first a red rose, then an apple, and finally a spindle. With an almost joyful air, she opened the tiny cage that had been sitting on the shelf behind her. With deft motion, she snatched up one of the mice within and pressed its tiny paw down on the spindle. Its struggles stopped, and it fell asleep. Josephine smirked and fished out a bottle of antidote.

She distantly heard the shop's back door open, but ignored it—it was probably Toad, come to demand that she 'leave her smelly brews and make some attempt at being social'. Bringing the bottle close to her face, she measured out a drop and aimed it at the mouse's tiny tongue. The antidote worked as quickly as the potion had, and she stuffed the mouse back into the box. 

Looking up, she saw that the rose was missing. With exasperation she leaned over the table to see if it had fallen on the floor, but it wasn't there. _Perhaps it rolled under the table,_ she reasoned, and ducked under the table, feeling gently for the petals, knowing that if she touched one of the thorns she would be subjected to one hundred years or more of sleep.

"Are you looking for this?"

Josephine started, smacking her head on the underside of the table. "Shit!" she swore as she backed out from under the table and looked up to face her unexpected guest.

He was tall, very tall, and thin as well. Something about him seemed vaguely familiar, but she couldn't place it. His skin was deathly white, his eyes red and reptilian, their slitted pupils fixed on her. Josephine gulped as she realized that her wand was on the shelf just behind her intruder. Seeing her gaze drop to the shelves, he pulled her wand out from behind his back. In his other hand he held the rose she had painted with the Potion of Eternal Sleep.

"You are the urchin they call Josephine," he said. His voice was high and imperious, commanding. With one of his long-fingered hands he stroked the stem of the rose. The girl held her breath, watching as his long fingernails traced oozing green trails around the thorns. "Josephine. That's not what I'd have called you."

Josephine licked her lips. Her mouth felt as dry as sandpaper. "What would you have called me, then?" she asked. Her voice quavered.

The man had no hair on the top of his head, but his eyebrows remained, black and angular. One of these black lengths arched sarcastically. "I don't think I would have called you anything. I would have killed you before you first drew breath." He flipped her wand up and caught it, sticking it into his belt. "But you slipped away, out of sight. Out of sight, out of mind, eh?" He laughed, a strange choking noise.

"I don't understand you," Josephine replied. "Why should my drawing breath have anything to do with you?" To prove her point, she exhaled noisily.

"_I am Lord Voldemort_. You are more than anyone sees. You are another heir of Slytherin—albeit a _girl_." He sneered on the last word, curling his thin lips.

"Slytherin. Why should this make any difference? My mother is a prostitute. Her name is Martin, not Slytherin." Josephine felt her courage growing. Who was this man—he could be called old, even—what was he doing? Was he trying to make some kind of point?

"Emily Martin," he hissed. "No, my dear girl, Emily Martin was not your mother. The whoreis dead, and rightfully so. I am your kin." Voldemort smiled at her recoil of disgust. "Do my looks repel you, my daughter?"

Josephine covered her eyes, one of her hands going to her black curls. "You are an old man. You couldn't possibly be my father."

"I was not always old, as I was not always of this appearance. I could still father more children."

"That disgusting!" she exclaimed. "You're a liar."

"Am I?" Voldemort countered, taking a step nearer. "Or is it you? Look at you—dark hair, those narrow features—Salazar Slytherin himself would be stunned."

"Who is this Slytherin?" she retorted. "Another old man who uses prostitutes? Or is he yet older, and must have the prostitutes come to him?"

He was across the room in an instant. One of his hands grasped her shoulder in a death grip, his long white arm pressing her again the wall, her feet dangling six inches above the floor. He shifted, cutting off her air supply and slowly crushing her Adam's apple. "You will hold your vile tongue, girl, or I'll have it out in an instant." He watched her lips gape like a dying fish, and then released her.

Josephine fell to the floor, gasping for breath. With a supreme effort she rolled onto her back, coughing, as her throat seemed to crackle its protests.

"It's not too late for you, girl. You could come with me, take your place beside me as my heir—and a producer of more Slytherin sons. The line of Slytherin continues with you, Josephine." He stared at her with his strange reptilian eyes. "You can chose."

"Why should I come with you?" she gasped, drawing herself to her knees. "You offer me something I know nothing about. Your heir!" she spat. "Are you truly so desperate, to seek out your bastard _daughter_. Why not your many sons?"

"There are none. Only you." He watched her, gauging her reaction. 

Josephine kept her face blank. _I need to get out of here; this man is insane,_ she thought. _And if I am truly his only heir_, she snorted mentally, _he won't risk any hurt to me. _"So you say now. If you are truly my father, I want proof," she challenged. "Solid proof."

There was a silence as long as an age. It was a strangely noiseless silence, and Josephine realized that the typical street noises of Knockturn Alley were missing. "Why is it so quiet?"

"Because no one wishes to irritate Lord Voldemort," he replied, his face as bland as could be. "Or interfere with his business." Josephine got the feeling that this comment wasn't really directed at her. She tore her gaze from Voldemort long enough to see a tuft of white hair poking out from around the doorframe.

"Toad?" she breathed. The man didn't stir. "Toad?" she asked again. She walked over to him slowly, keeping her eyes on Voldemort, her heart thumping painfully in her chest. The pale man made no move to stop her, but instead almost smiled, his thin lips stretching into a malicious crescent. 

Josephine reached out a hand and pushed Toad's slumping body lightly. It gave easily, his unbalanced lower body twisted at an unnatural angle. His back was clearly broken, his single leg limp. His green eyes were open, their suspicious gleam forever wiped away. She blinked twice, to give herself time to recollect herself. Though she wanted to scream and cry and strangle Voldemort, she knew that now she had to be strong and silent. She drew herself up taller and looked back inside the Potions shop at the red eyes, and said lightly, "So you finished this job."

Voldemort had to duck as he exited the shop. He looked down at the sad crumpled body with no expression, strong and silent, and replied, "I did."

In that moment, something changed.

Josephine knew, for a certain fact, that this man _was _her father, and because he was her father, she would never be able to live normally. She saw that because some people wished to destroy Voldemort they would also wish to destroy her, and she couldn't trust anyone. Josephine realized that the only way to become herself instead of the daughter of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was to run, run away, and never come back to Knockturn Alley. 

So Josephine Riddle ran.

But she didn't get as far as she thought she would.****


	4. catch the girl

Serpentigena Chapter 4: Catch the girl 

Though Remus had been guaranteed the day off, he had opted to Apparate to Diagon Alley. He had decided that drinking himself into a stupor was the order of the day, a pleasure that grew harder and harder to achieve as the days wore on, as his body developed a tolerance for alcohol that many bar flies would have admired. Neville was visiting his mother and father at St. Mungo's, but Remus had opted not to go. Marcus and Jolene Longbottom were another incident Remus wanted to drink away. He was on his twelfth glass when Josephine rounded the corner, her face set. She was running as fast as she could in the crowded street, blocked as it was with Friday afternoon traffic.

Remus' inhibitions were loose, though not gone entirely, and he checked his wits at the door. _There must be a reason for this_, he thought carefully. Unfortunately his train of thought de-railed at that point, and he slumped again the doorway, wonder why he had even gotten up. Josephine was fast disappearing when Voldemort appeared at the end of the street, at the top of the square from which Knockturn and Diagon sprouted, like two different flowers from the same plant. He raised his wand in a grand gesture and whispered something.

Though he was drunk, Remus was not stupid. He ducked and managed to avoid the glass as half the windows in the pub blew into smithereens. Something in his brain clicked. _Josephine, that funny girl,_ he thought,_ she's got something that Voldemort wants._ He grabbed the nearest glass and drained it, pulled himself upright, and walked down the street.

If Voldemort had meant to make finding Josephine easier, his plan backfired in a huge way. The street became a stampede of insane, pushing, shoving bodies that hid the urchin better than anything else could have. Remus, a tall man, had trouble getting through the crowd. His gaze, though blurred with the fading anesthetic of alcohol, was fixed upon the head of tangled black curls that darted through the milling masses. 

_I should catch her,_ came slowly to Remus. _Dumbledore thinks she's important. _Without any further thought he lunged forward and caught her arm. With a slight feeling of shock he felt her bones twist underneath the flesh as she wheeled on him.

"Let me go!" she cried. "Let go of me!"

"No," he replied. "Can't let Voldemort get you." Remus shook his head to clear it, pressed his wand to her chest, and mumbled "_Stupefy._"

~

"Hello, Josephine Riddle."

Josephine came back to awareness as quickly as she'd fallen from it, her eyes snapping open and pulling herself to a sitting position in a single breath. She looked around, seeing none of the familiar dirty buildings, nor Charcoal Sarah or Emily or Toad—Toad! She blinked back sudden tears. The room she was in was white and sterile, the bed she was on like a bar of soap. She smelled soap in the air and knew by the stripped feeling of her skin that some of this soap had been used on her.

The man that sat next to her was no Voldemort, but he wasn't a Toad either. He was a very old man with long white hair, his face more wrinkled than Sarah's and kinder than Emily's. "That is your name, is it not?"

It took an effort to speak. "Just Josephine," she replied. "I have no other name." Josephine watched the man suspiciously, drawing her knees up to her chest. With a twang of irritation she realized she wore white robes as stark as the room. "What have you done with my clothes?"

"Burnt them," said a woman who stood on the other side of the bed. She wore the familiar symbol of the Red Cross on her white hat. "What was left of them, anyway. They couldn't really be called clothes."

Josephine flushed, stung at this insult. "Forgive me, good Nurse. Maybe I could have used some of my family fortunes and bought new ones!" She clenched her fist in the embarrassment that these people had probably seen her in full nudity, taking no respect for her modesty or pride. "In case you weren't informed by your examination, I have not been leading a life of riches and wealth!"

"That's enough, Josephine," said the man with the long beard.

"How dare you address me so familiarly!" she snapped, slipping out of the covers and backing away. "I don't know you, and you have no right to call me by my given name!"

He sighed with a patience that made Josephine want to slap him. "It was only a bath and a quick way to rid you of the fleas you had."

Josephine didn't reply. "I want decent clothing," she demanded. "Immediately."

The old man shrugged. "Who am I to order such things?"

There was a banging on the door before it was throw open by a small man with a big hat and an entourage of big men with smaller hats. Josephine backed further into her corner, recognizing Cornelius Fudge from pictures she had seen in the papers. He was not well liked in either of the Alleys these days, but in Knockturn he had always been hated. Cornelius Fudge was not the sort of man Josephine wanted to be in the same room with.

"That's the girl!" he cried, pointing an imperious, if stubby, finger at Josephine's face. "That the daughter of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named! Arrest her immediately!"

The men began to advance toward the girl, their faces set in grim purpose. Josephine covered her eyes in horror. Her fears were coming true. She was going to die.

"Cornelius," the man said calmly, rising to his feet. Josephine peeked at him. He was taller than she'd first thought, reed-thin. "This is not the way that this should be done."

Fudge stopped and drew himself up indignantly, bringing his head level with the other's chin. "Dumbledore, my good man, this is not your area of jurisdiction."

Dumbledore stared down at Cornelius with severe blue eyes. "But it is, Cornelius. While she is in Hogwarts, you may not touch her without a warrant."

Cornelius smiled triumphantly. "I do have a warrant, Dumbledore!" He reached into his jacket and pulled out a crisply folded paper. Dumbledore took it and scanned it.

"It says here that you are arresting her for resisting arrest and being a general nuisance and a hazard to society," he mused. "Tell me, Minister, is there proof of any of this?"

Cornelius's shoulders lost a little of their boldness. "Well, no, but look at her! Just look at her!" Every eye in the room turned her way. "She could be his double!"

Dumbledore looked at Josephine with his chilly blue eyes and Josephine stared back with her own blue eyes. "You have no proof," she blurted. "You need solid proof that I'm related to Voldemort," she added, purposely not calling him by an alias. All the men that followed Cornelius shivered. The nurse crossed herself. Dumbledore remained unmoved. "Until you have that proof, your warrant is as void." _"If you are truly my father, I want proof, solid proof."_ Her own voice echoed from the near past to mock her.

There was a silence, and then Dumbledore spoke. "What do you say to that?" he asked Fudge, who was at a temporary loss for words. Josephine began to back further away, and one of the big men in small hats grabbed Josephine's wrist and she yanked it out of his grasp.

"Don't touch me!" she spat.

"You—you saw that! That was resisting arrest, right there. Resisting arrest." Fudge pointed his stubby, accusing finger at the girl again. "That is definitely a crime."

"To be arrested there must be a crime!" Josephine snapped. Dumbledore raised his eyebrows at her. _Be silent,_ he seemed to say. As much as she hated to do as he asked, she looked down and clamped her mouth shut.

"Cornelius, until you present me with real proof I cannot allow you to take this girl into custody," Dumbledore said softly. "It would go against my principles, and those of the Ministry of Magic." He raised his eyebrows once more.

"Don't be a fool, Dumbledore!" Fudge cried. "Look at her!" All eyes turned to the corner, taking in the black hair, the sharp face, the angular slimness. She stood straighter. _Even if my father is a serial killer, he's better than any of these buffoons._

"I rather think she resembles Harry Potter," Dumbledore said amiably, "But so far in this debate my opinions make no difference." A few of Fudge's men looked thoughtful.

There was silence that stretched for millennia, and Josephine leaned against the wall with a heavy sigh. It wasn't much of a choice, she thought privately, to be stuck with one stranger or another. The only thing that really made Dumbledore the better man in her eyes was the fact that he didn't seem intent on killing her. So, she decided, she would go along with whatever he suggested.

"Cornelius, I suggest that I hold on to Josephine for the time being. She's not going anywhere, and should you come up with the proof, she will be right here waiting for your _legal_ jurisdiction." Dumbledore placed his hands in the pockets of his robes and smiled amiably down at the shorter man.

"Josephine? Who in God's name is Josephine?" Fudge sneered. "You mean _her_? Voldemort's daughter?"

"You have no proof," Josephine began heatedly, then silenced with a glare from Dumbledore. 

Fudge shifted on the balls of his feet, and then looked down. "Fine. If you would sign that the girl is under your care?"

"Certainly," Dumbledore said sweetly. "Josephine is a simple orphan needing guidance that Hogwarts will provide."

Josephine glared at him. He smiled at her, and then motioned for Fudge's men to back away. One of them drew up an agreement that Dumbledore signed. Josephine was to stay with him, within the Hogwarts grounds and whenever possible inside the building, and no, she was not allowed to take classes with the other students. She should refrain from public contact until further arrangements were made, and no one was allowed to interview her. Fudge signed it first, Dumbledore second.

The girl was shocked and repulsed by the two simple signatures that signed away her life to someone else that from here on out would control every aspect of her well-being and happiness. When Fudge and his men had filed out, Dumbledore was the only one left.

"You believe him, don't you," Josephine accused. "I'm just the daughter of Voldemort. It doesn't matter that I only learned about it today, and anything before that was done thinking that I was truly my own person and perfectly happy that way! Why couldn't you just leave me alone?" she cried, unsure who the question was directed at.

Dumbledore sighed. "He found you first, didn't he?" When Josephine looked down, he nodded for her. "Voldemort would have killed you once he had gotten what he wanted."

"Oh, it wasn't me that he wanted?" Josephine frowned. "But I'm not—never have—I don't understand."

"Personally, I don't think he does either. It's the one thing that has never happened to him before—he has an heir. You." Dumbledore watched her gravely. "He thinks you will try to usurp his power. He has no trust for women." He patted the bed beside him. "Come and sit."

"I prefer to stand."

He shrugged. "Suit yourself. But you do realize that he will never stop hunting you."

Josephine fidgeted under his solemn blue gaze, wringing her hands anxiously. "I figured as much. But then there's Minister Fudge, and I've got the feeling he just wants me hung and on display."

"That's a good guess, but the Minister no longer has jurisdiction in Hogwarts. That's up to the governors, who I think will take our side after they meet the sweet little girl who lost the genetic lottery." Dumbledore pointed at her. "You just need to prove you don't take after Voldemort's power-hungry and cruel tendencies."

Josephine shrugged. "They'll paint me as whomever they want me to be." She fingered her hair, marveling at how soft and light it felt. "If they want a new villain, that's what they'll say I am." She closed her eyes, for a second seeing crowds of people, silent, watching her in a bloodlust akin to Roman times. In seconds they would choose her death—would she be beheaded? Hung? Drawn and quartered? Or was it to be death by the lions? "They'll kill me," she whispered. 

"How old are you?" Dumbledore asked.

Josephine counted mentally. "I turned sixteen a few months ago."

"That's good. You're still a minor, so Hogwarts can hide you from the public eye."

"Why would you do that for me?" she asked bitterly. "You don't even know me."

"Consider it my good deed," Dumbledore said wryly. "I'm going to have to make some arrangements for you, like a room and maybe some private lessons," he said, changing the subject. "A pass to the library, possibly."

"You have a library?" she breathed. "A big one?" Flickering visions of her worn and moth-eaten rentals passed before her eyes. Was it possible she could have real books that hadn't been through six previous owners? 

"The biggest in England," Dumbledore said cheerfully. 

There was a brisk knock on the door, followed by a man poking his head around the doorframe. Josephine didn't gasp in shock, but privately she wanted to scream. What was this, some kind of conspiracy? It was the dark man from Wyatt's potion shop, his hair hanging over his face and his sparkling dark eyes fixed on her. He looked as startled as she felt.

"Ah, Severus! Impeccable timing, as usual. This is Josephine. Josephine, may I introduce Severus Snape?" Dumbledore's blue eyes twinkled with an unholy amusement. "Or do you already know each other?"

"We've never been introduced," Josephine replied. She tucked her hands into the pockets of her robes so that no one would see them shake. 

Snape watched her as he closed the door behind him; handed Dumbledore a stack of thick books he'd been carrying; and kept up his steady gaze as he seated himself on another chair. "You're quite infamous, you know," Snape said. His voice was a light baritone, each word clearly enunciated. "Your potions are some of the most excellent I've seen on sale."

"I work hard on them," she replied. Josephine wondered if her sleeping potion-rose was still in Voldemort's hands. _That_ was truly a work of art—beauty and poison in a single object. "Are you interested in Potions?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact. I'm the Potions Master at Hogwarts." Josephine had a sudden vision of Snape bent over a cauldron, his long hair hanging over his face as he chanted mystically. She bit her lip to stop a giggle.

"Could you tell me something?" she asked, fighting back a smile. "How did your anti-weariness brew work out?"

Snape smiled, a sort of unhealthy grimace. He didn't look like the sort that smiled more than once a day. "Very well, thank you. I take it you've been reading _Uncommon Underbrews_?"

"I read it once last year."

"You remember it?"

"Very well. It was exceedingly interesting." Josephine gestured. "The way the pot is beneath the fire instead of over it, and how the ashes have to be sucked away so that they don't foul things, and how it can reverse the simplest brews—" she realized she was babbling and stopped. "Of course, I've only been able to practice it in theory. Bad equipment."

Dumbledore and Snape exchanged looks. Josephine groaned inwardly. _I can see the headlines already. They accuse me of poisoning everyone who's died in the past four years and I'll be swinging by my neck before I can blink three times. _She knew that the Ministry of Magic in England had only recently crossed 'beheading' and 'drawing and quartering' off its list of acceptable criminal punishments. Hanging was still quite legal, should the occasion demand it. _Maybe I should move to Canada,_ she mused.

A letter popped abruptly into existence in front of the Headmaster, its tiny golden wings fluttering hard to keep itself upright. Dumbledore cleared his throat to break the uncomfortable silence as he read the letter. "Well, Josephine, the arrangements have been made. You've got a room in the South wing with a private bathroom. You'll be staying with us for two weeks or so until permanent arrangements are made."

Josephine looked away, biting her lip. Where had her life gone?****


	5. The Unexpected Heir

**Serpentigena**

Chapter 5: The Unexpected Heir 

"How did this happen?" Voldemort asked. His voice, always a thing to fear, had gone flat and cold with fury. Wearing his habitual black robes he paced his private chamber, his red eyes narrowed to slits of bloody malice.

Lucius Malfoy stood impassive. With a shuddering breath he sighed to begin a pacifying answer, but stopped himself short. He knew, after more than twenty-five years in Voldemort's service, to never answer his master's rhetorical questions. He clasped his hands tight behind his back, praying he was not to be Voldemort's chosen punching bag.

"HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?" Voldemort roared. "How?"

Unsure of what he was talking about, the escape of the girl or how she came to be in the first place, Lucius said carefully "Which incident are you referring to, my Lord?"

"That girl should never have existed," he spat. "One _fucking_ incident, and look how everything turns out." Voldemort pointed his wand at a chair that burst into a violent explosion of fiery splinters. "And it's a _girl_," he muttered. "My damn luck." He pointed his wand at a lamp and it, too, exploded.

"If it's a girl," Lucius ventured, "She'll be easier to kill."

Voldemort wheeled and pointed his wand at Lucius' throat. "That's not it! Women are smarter than you think, Lucius. A woman won't come out and fight, she'll poison your drink while you aren't looking." He looked away, murmuring, "And she's capable of it, too. Poisons are her art." Voldemort sighed as he looked at the rose he had placed in a vase by his favorite chair. It stayed in red perfection, an innocent but deadly beauty. "Thrice cursed."

Lucius stayed still, hoping that soon Voldemort would want to 'think alone' and send him out. With a quick blink he brought to mind his own son's wife, a shy creature that spoke no English, only French, and did exactly what she was told, when she was told to do it. What was her name again? Emilie? He didn't really remember what she looked like and had never really heard her voice. In Lucius' mind, this woman was the perfect wife. He contrasted this china doll with the girl (what was her name?) and found her overly independent and sarcastic, not to mention completely disrespectful.

No, this girl would never go along with what Voldemort wanted. Lucius grimaced. That would never work.

"Anyway, Dumbledore probably has the bitch by now," Voldemort continued, sinking moodily onto his chair. "And she be just itching to jump out and slit my throat when he gets through with her."

Lucius was quick to reassure his Lord that there was no way a teenaged girl could ever hurt him in any lasting way, and even with Dumbledore's help it was impossible.

Voldemort smiled his serpentine smile and waved Lucius away. "Go away. I'm weary of you."

Lucius beat his retreat, barely hiding his smile of relief when he exited the room. He had survived his meeting with Voldemort. 

~

Severus Snape stormed around his office, whipping down seemingly random plants from their hooks and crushing them into a fine powder. Dumping the powder into a bowl, he incinerated it with a poke of his wand and inhaled the smoke that rose upwards from the bowl. Immediately his racing heart settled, his hands ceased their shaking, and he was able to sit down and process his thoughts with some degree of rationality.

_Voldemort's daughter_, he thought. _In Hogwarts._ These two thoughts were enough to make his palms sweat. He calmed himself once more. "My god," he sighed, placing his head in his hands. "All those perfect potions—they were hers."

_It really isn't fair_, Snape reflected, _that the only child of my greatest enemy should be my equal in the thing I love above all others. _He remembered Josephine's face as she bargained with him, the snapping mind and the critical blue eyes. _And she's brilliant, as brilliant as Voldemort. Maybe even more so, once she gets some training._

"She's like an explosive," he murmured. "Dangerous, but properly used she could be a great weapon."

_Properly used?_ He queried himself, _why do I use that phrase? I know what it is to be used, and I hate it. I am used because of a foolish choice I made at Josephine's age. She's still on the fence, though I can't expect she'll be eager to join our forces after what that _idiot_ Lupin did to get a hold of her._ He stroked his left wrist lightly, wincing even though it didn't hurt to touch the Dark Mark. It was more of a mental fear than a physical pain.

He though again of the Josephine he had seen cowering in the corner of the Hospital Wing, like a trapped animal, all camouflage and protection stripped away. Snape drummed his fingers on his desk, recalling that he skin was paler than he had first thought, her hair darker, her eyes a more piercing blue. 

"Even her father would be in shock to realize that this is the heir he's been wanting of late, and she's beyond anyone's wildest dreams," he mused. "Better than a son would have been—even he himself would be hard-pressed to father another this close to his 'perfect' image." That was mildly disturbing.

_It's funny that the moment I saw her for what she was, I agreed. She's Voldemort's heir, but if she inherits his position she could change it—change his crusade against Muggles._ Then he shivered, putting a hand to his forehead. _Or she could fill his position entirely, perfectly, and complete the terrible thing that Salazar Slytherin started a thousand years ago._

Snape rose and pulled down a new set of herbs. Normally he was against sleeping medications, but this was no normal circumstance. He needed some help to sleep this one off.

~

Josephine sat alone in her new room. It was luxurious: the four-poster bed had a mattress nearly a foot thick, the floor was carpeted and the windows had lush, floor-length curtains. There was even a wardrobe that Josephine could have lived in quite comfortably. The only think that felt remotely homey was the chair that the firewood had been stacked on—it reminded the girl of Charcoal Sarah's chair. It was this chair she sat in with her eyes tightly closed, her hands shaking at she drew a blanket around her narrow shoulders.

It was a big change from the walk-in closet she had lived in for six years.

Her skin felt bare and pink within the new clothing the nurse had handed her. It was apparently a sort of school uniform, judging by the badge sewn onto the lapel of the black robes. She squinted down at it, wondering why they had chosen to give her the green and silver badge. The green was almost the same color as Toad's eyes. Josephine opened her eyes all the way and watched the fire, filling her mind with flames to stop the tide of tears.

There was a knock at her door some time later.

She looked up, startled, as the door swung open a bit. It was two young men, both dark-haired. One wore glasses and was darkly tanned; the other was thin and slumping. Both were looking at her with alarm.

The man with glasses lightly punched the arm of the other. "Last time I let you get directions, Neville."

Neville held up the paper. "See for yourself. I followed the directions, Dumbledore said he would meet us in the room."

"He forgot to say there was someone in it."

"It's just a student," Neville rationalized.

Josephine cleared her throat. "What are you doing in my room?" she asked.

"The Headmaster directed us to this room," the man with glasses responded. "Shouldn't you be in the Slytherin Common room or something?"

"Excuse me?" Josephine interjected. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Dumbledore chose that moment to make his entrance in a swish of blue robes and silver beard. "Hello Harry, hello Neville. Good morning Josephine." He smiled genially at the three younger faces, ignoring Josephine's glare and Harry's look of confusion. Neville, in contrast, had begun to look astonished.

"Headmaster," Neville began, his eyes rounder than normal. "Who is this?" 

"This is Josephine Riddle," Dumbledore said, reaching for the girl's shoulder.

Josephine jerked away. "My name is not Riddle."

Harry's eyes widened. "Not the same as Tom Marvolo Riddle?"

"The very same." Dumbledore said, sounding pleased that the two had caught on so quickly. Josephine met Harry's gaze angrily.

"Who's Tom Marvolo Riddle?" Neville asked anxiously. Harry pulled him aside and began whispering furiously in his ear, shooting meaningful glances at Josephine. In turn, Neville replied in undertone. Josephine could only hear random phrases like "Knockturn Alley", "Professor Lupin".

Dumbledore turned to Josephine. "Do you know who Tom Marvolo Riddle is?"

Josephine shook her head, and then shrugged. "I don't really care about whatever they're on about," she said bluntly. "I want to go home."

Dumbledore gestured hopelessly. "Miss Josephine, you don't have a home." When Josephine began to protest he cut her off. "Did I tell you that there was a fire on Knockturn Alley almost directly after my man found you?"

Josephine shook her head wordlessly. She began to shiver.

"It was the Hotel Noire."

He said something more, but Josephine heard only the blood rushing in her ears. She was cold; her flesh shivered but her mind was the cold of steel. Of anger. _Toad. Emily. When I kill you, father dearest, I will shove their names down your throat._ She clenched her fists and pressed her lips together in an effort to stop from shaking herself to bits. Josephine inhaled and exhaled with an effort, recalling the words of the man who claimed to be her father: "_I would have killed you before you first drew breath._" Would he not stop at killing her?

She exhaled again. "Emily's dead," she gasped, and without her consent her body folded and she hit the ground on her knees, staring blankly at the wall opposite her. 

Dumbledore reached for her shoulder. "Don't touch me!" she cried, striking his hand away. "Just leave! Leave me alone!" Harry, Neville, and Dumbledore exchanged glances, but they left. Josephine waited until their voices were far enough down the hall, and then she buried her face in a pillow and screamed her throat raw.****


	6. The Price of Life

**Serpentigena**

Chapter 6: The Price of Life 

Snape was still half-asleep when a timid knock on his classroom door roused him. "Come in," he called, raising his head off his desk with a grimace. He was far too old to be sleeping on his desk like some student. Already the word was being passed around that old Snape was getting senile in his old age. "I'm not old," he grumbled. "I'm not even fifty."

It took him a moment to recognize the skinny girl that walked in the door. She didn't look altogether a stranger, but she was not familiar. Her hair was a frizzled mass of black curls, her face narrow, and the chin was sharp enough to cut. She turned piercing blue eyes in his direction, and he remembered. _Josephine. Voldemort's daughter._

"Hello," Josephine muttered. The robes she wore that day were too short in the ankle and too broad at the waist, the black spot in the faded fabric revealing where the House badge had been cut away. 

They would have fitted Millicent Bulstrode in her earlier years quite nicely, Snape thought privately, and answered, "Hello. Did Dumbledore send you?"

She nodded, scrutinizing the caldron in front of her. "You use pewter? Isn't that terrible for the more advanced students? It can mess with the intensity of some of the…" she trailed off.

"There are no advanced students," Snape said calmly. "Just you, and I think if _they_ would let you, you could apply for a Master in Potions right now."

"You're a Master, aren't you?" Josephine asked, picking up a vial of unicorn hair. "When did you get yours?"

Snape thought. "When I was twenty-six—I think. Back then I was the youngest member." _That was twenty years ago,_ Snape thought with shock. _God. I really am getting old._

Josephine nodded absently while looking at a pile of melted cauldrons in a pile in the corner. She picked one up by the twisted handle and peered at the underside. "Wow," she muttered. "This could be a work of art." She replaced it and looked at the various bundles of dried herbs stacked on the shelves.

"Don't touch anything," Snape said unconsciously.

Josephine glared at him. "I'm not stupid," she snapped. "This is yours." Her hair, defying the band that someone had tied around it, was popping free to wave around her face like bent wire. "I wouldn't touch this stuff."

"Is it not good enough for you?" Snape asked, leaning on his desk. "Is my store too humble for your experiments?"

"What if it is?" she snarled back. "You can't teach me anything."

_God,_ Snape thought, _I am not cut out for this kind of work. I _hate_ kids. _"What if I told you that I could teach you new things?"

"I can learn anything I want from a book," she replied. "I don't need help."

"Haven't you ever wondered if your potions worked?" he queried, seeking desperately for a hole in her confidence. 

Josephine shook her head and looked away.

"Never?"

"Maybe when I was younger," she replied. "But now I work for nothing less than perfection."

"How do you know that it's perfection?" he asked.

"I don't," Josephine admitted. "But you've got to admit, it's pretty damn close." She shrugged one shoulder and the corners of her mouth lifted marginally.

Snape nodded. "I can make it better, if you'll listen to me."

"Just because I'll listen doesn't mean I have to agree," Josephine objected.

He couldn't help himself—he cracked a smile. "I have a sinking feeling that we will not agree on most things, Miss Josephine. We'll start with identification. Bring me some monkshood."

~

Dumbledore and Harry watched, unseen, from the other side of the Potions doorway.

"I can't believe it. Our little monster is taking orders from Snape," Harry breathed. "She really does look like Tom Riddle, doesn't she?"

Dumbledore shook his head. "She's not a monster, she's just vastly misunderstood. You understand, she lived under her own jurisdiction for at least sixteen years. She was understandably unwilling to trust anyone. Snape, due to similar interests, was the ideal person to try and win her trust." He glanced through the barred window at the exposed profile. "And I agree, she's practically his feminine double. Josephine is a lovely girl, even if she takes after her father's terrible temper."

Harry peered at the man and girl as Josephine lit the fire beneath the cauldron. "Do you really think it's true? That Voldemort is really her father?"

"Voldemort certainly seems to think so," Dumbledore replied. 

Harry shrugged. "I'm not willing to ask Voldemort if he's sure he was messing around with prostitutes seventeen or so years ago. We can take his word on this one."

They watched for another ten minutes as Josephine and Snape bickered, stewed the various ingredients together, and filled jars with the violet goop that was the result. Josephine smiled as she looked at the jars, but quickly schooled her expression back to being sullen. It felt so good to be doing something that felt natural. She turned to Snape, who was watching her, and said, "I guess that it, isn't it?"

"Until tomorrow," Snape replied. He went back to examining the pot they had made the potion in, his black hair obscuring much of his face.

Josephine nodded and turned to go. She pretended not to notice the footsteps on the other side of the door. _Who's watching me? A behaviorist, perhaps? Maybe I should just pretend to go crazy. Then they'll be able to label me quickly and I'll stop getting watched everywhere I go._ With annoyance she pushed open the door hard enough to make it swing back and nearly break her nose. "Curses," she muttered, keeping her eyes straight front as she began the lonely hike back to her room.

Josephine had gone nearly half the distance when someone running down the hallway knocked her down.

"Oof," she said, then pushed the person off her chest. "Watch where you're going, idiot," she snapped as she pulled herself into a sitting position.

"Sorry," said the boy as he got up, brushing dust off his own black robes. The yellow badge on his chest winked at Josephine as he scrutinized her.

_He was a student_. Josephine got to her feet. "It's all right," she replied. "Just watch where you're going next time." She continued walking towards her room, praying that the boy would forget about her. _Dumbledore will kill me if this gets out; that I've been seen._

"What's your name?' the boy asked. Josephine pretended not to hear him and quickly rounded the corner and slipped into her room. Her heart was thudding as she sat down on the bed.

_Why am I so nervous?_ she asked herself. _That boy had no way of knowing whom he was talking to._ Still, she saw the boy's brown eyes, looking at her. She shivered.

"Do I believe what they say?" Josephine whispered to herself. "Is that monster my father?"

She closed her eyes and saw his face, strangely impassive, staring down at Toad. Behind the red, reptilian eyes, there was something that reminded Josephine very much of herself. It was beyond all description, but in that moment a spark had been passed, and Josephine _knew_ that this man was her father.

"That's a thought I shouldn't plan on sharing," she muttered and she pulled her blankets over her head.

~

Voldemort sat alone in his room. He had placed Josephine's rose in front of the fireplace, so that he could focus on the rose and the shifting flames by turn. He unconsciously massaged his temples with his long fingers. These headaches, the throbbing pains that had plagued him since his youth, had increased of late, making any kind of noise intolerable.

The same question had plagued him for days: what to do with the girl? He focused his eyes on the rose.

Obviously she wasn't going to be easy to kill, what with Dumbledore and Hogwarts protecting her. Now that he thought about it, Voldemort wasn't really sure that he wanted her dead. None of the Death Eaters knew their Lord's true age, but he did: seventy-seven, and steadily growing older. It was like Fate was laughing at his boasts that Lord Voldemort could not die, even as his vision and muscles began weakening. Josephine was young. Though she was female, she was intelligent, tough, and a Slytherin after his own heart.

"I could use her," he mused. 

"But she'll hate it so," he contradicted himself. 

"What do you care?" he replied. "She's just a kid. No worth."

"True. But I don't want another puppet, I want an heir who'll hold true when I die."

"Oh, so now I want to give up the reins?" he snarled, standing so suddenly that his chair overturned. "To some bastard brat."

"My bastard though. Better than someone else's, even if her mother was who she was." He stood still for a moment, and then roared in displeasure, clearing a table of its contents in a single swipe. "Stupid girl. She thinks that she was Emily's, ha!" he rumbled. "She doesn't know that her real mother is a raving lunatic, a psycho. She doesn't know that she's still alive."

He bit his lip. "It can't be found out. I've got enough money poring into St. Mungo's to keep her and her stupid husband immobile for life."

"It won't be," he assured himself. "Nobody knows about Jolene's little act of infidelity." He closed his eyes, seeing the pretty young face, the look of fear, and the sideways glance at the room nearby, where her small son slept. He saw her white teeth bite down on her full lower lip as her natural bravery fought with the primal fear that rose from Voldemort like a stench.

He heard the whisper in his ear: "If I submit quietly, you must promise never to harm my child."

He had promised, and he had never touched the boy. What was his name…Nathan? It didn't matter. Voldemort had not broken his promise: two months later he had tortured her husband. Jolene had gone raving mad at the scene. He cursed himself. 

"I should have seen it," he grumbled. "Should have seen it." It was clear to him in retrospect: the unusual roundness of Jolene's slender frame, the heavy breasts, the wider hips. "She hadn't told her husband that the child she carried wasn't his," Voldemort said suddenly. "Not once." _He probably didn't even know she carried a child. When I tortured him and he went mad, Jolene went mad. So when was the baby delivered? The mental anguish she went through should have caused a miscarriage. _ His eyes widened. _The nurses at St. Mungo's did it, before Narcissa Malfoy got a job there and started feeding Jolene and her husband enough drugs to keep them in a vegetable state. _ Voldemort swore and smashed a vase off a table across the room.

That was one up on Dumbledore, who would never believe that one of his own Aurors would be the bearer of such an unspeakable child. Voldemort smiled, then righted his chair and sat back down. "Come in, Snape," he called, hearing the voices of Lucius Malfoy and Severus Snape at the door. Both of his most mistrusted Death Eaters: changeable Lucius and traitor Severus. The door opened with a small click, and Voldemort's plan fell together.

Voldemort watched the black-haired man as he crossed the room to kneel at Voldemort's feet and kiss the hem of his robes. Snape kept his eyes on the ground, something Voldemort relished and suspected. Relished because he knew that all were afraid to meet his eyes, suspected because he knew that Snape knew that Voldemort could read eyes.

"I have decided to let you live, my slippery friend," Voldemort said softly.

He got the pleasure of seeing Snape's hands shake as he picked up the hem of the robe to hiss it once more. "My Lord, you are gracious."

"I am, aren't I?" Voldemort said, getting up and almost-accidentally hitting the prostrate form with his foot. "There is a condition on this grace, however."

Snape didn't move, but his voice was almost inaudible with apprehension. "What is this condition, my Lord?" he asked.

"You resent this?"

"I am thankful for my life, my Lord," Snape replied. Sweat was beading on his forehead and on the back of his neck. "Nothing you ask is too much."

"Do you value your life, Severus Snape?" Voldemort asked. He had turned around with a glass of something that looked like a cola—brown and fizzing. "Drink this, and I will tell you what your condition is." He pointed his wand at the kneeling man, the man whose black eyes had suddenly widened in fear.

Snape felt a cold line of sweat run down his back. His eyes darted like a caged animal, his hands seeking the wand he kept in his robes and knowing simultaneously that the other Death Eaters had taken his wand. Should he refuse? Should he take it and rely on his long years of experience with poisons to identify the thing Voldemort held out to him now?

_I will die if I refuse, _Snape thought, _and I may as well be dead if I take it. Besides, how many times did I test potions on myself as a student? I will recover._

Severus Snape stretched out his hand and took the glass, and he held it up to the light, noting that it wasn't clear, but murky brown. There was no sediment on the bottom of the glass, and when he inhaled there was a bitter scent. Poison then. He shivered, and before his nerve failed him he tipped back his head and drained the glass. 


	7. Jolene

Serpentigena Chapter 7: Jolene 

"What was in the glass?" Snape asked, tossing it to one side. He heard it shatter with extraordinary clarity and counted the beats of his heart. Not dead yet.

"A gift from my heir," Voldemort smiled. "An heirloom from Josephine's potion supply."

Snape's heart skipped a beat. "What type of poison?" he whispered. He had seen the terrible things that she had made—was capable of making!

Voldemort smiled his serpentine smile. "Oh, that I shan't tell," he said wickedly. "But," he grinned still more widely, "I have something that may be of great use to you." He pulled out a tiny glass vial and waved it in front of Snape's nose.

"The antidote!" Snape gasped, and instinctively he grabbed for it.

Voldemort closed his long fingers around it. "I asked you this once before, Severus Snape: do you value your life?"

"Yes!" he exclaimed.

"Then, as you value life, you will find Josephine, my daughter, and bring her to me in less than three days." Voldemort smiled once more. "When she is in my possession, you will have the antidote."

Snape exhaled. "I'll do it," he said softly, not yet sure if he was lying or not.

Voldemort turned away and picked up Josephine's rose, staring into the flames pensively.

Snape rose to leave. "My—my Lord," he asked haltingly with his hand on the door. "What was the poison?"

Voldemort's back was cold. "If you really want to know," he said, "I suggest that you fail."

~

Dumbledore sighed, pulling out the sheaf of pictures one more time. He had to suppress a yawn as he flipped through the photographs one more time. Remus and Neville had taken it upon themselves to collect them as a way of finding Josephine's mother—which, Dumbledore had to admit, was a moot point: it didn't really matter who she was—but they had worked very hard to find all the pictures.

He flipped through the photographs. _Maybe I should sort them some way, so that it looks like I've given it some thought._ He sorted the various women by age first. Those too young or too old he put aside, left with a series of women in their late thirties or early forties. Dumbledore spread them out on his desk, first eliminating those that he could tell had no chance of being the girl's mother, then those that seemed unlikely, then those that didn't look anything like her.

At the end of an hour he was left with ten photographs. Dumbledore scrutinized each one, shaking his head. It was no good. Josephine carried nothing in her face or body that didn't mirror that of Tom Riddle's. 

With a sigh of despair he pulled a class portrait out from within a drawer. It was the only picture anyone had left of Tom Riddle before he had been destroyed physically, and in was dated _December 1944_. He was eighteen in the photo, a very handsome young man. Dark hair lay in smooth waves over a high forehead and straight nose. His smile bared perfect white teeth and a pair of sable brows framed intelligent, deep brown eyes that twinkled in the light from the photographer's flash.

Brown eyes.

Dumbledore grabbed the canvas with Josephine on it. Light eyes—blue, he thought. Josephine has blue eyes.

Victoriously he grabbed the photos of the various women. Brown eyes. Brown. Brown. Green. Brown. Hazel. Blue! It was the studio portrait of a nineteen-year-old witch, taken twenty-four years before. She was not smiling, and she wore her black hair up in a bun. Her hands gripped a broomstick, and she wore the robes of her Quidditch team, the dark green and gold of the Holyhead Harpies. She had delicate features and small bones and the bluest eyes Dumbledore had ever seen. He flipped the picture over to read the name on the back and his shoulders slumped.

_Jolene Longbottom-Rueben, 1979._

Jolene Longbottom had been insane for longer than Josephine had been alive. Even supposing Josephine was older than she thought she was, that still made her about six months short of the possible age range. 

Dumbledore stroked his beard reflectively, compared the blue-blue eyes, and watched as Jolene waved merrily at him from her colored prison. He placed the studio portrait of Tom Riddle and the photograph of Jolene on either side of Josephine's charcoal likeness. He'd have to get a second opinion, but he was sure he'd hit on something huge.

There was a careful knock on his door.

"Come in," Dumbledore called. He looked up as the door swung open and his eyes widened.

**~**

Neville Longbottom bent over the smoking clear potion, blinking rapidly to calm his watering eyes. Almost automatically he grabbed the herbs and measured them quickly, tossing and stirring with a speed his that would have shocked his former classmates. Nobody, least of all Neville himself, could understand what it was that made him so good at making the Wolfsbane potion, but Neville appreciated the skill. It had got him a job as the assistant of Remus Lupin, his personal idol.

Out of habit Neville looked over his shoulder to see if Snape was watching him, knowing even as he turned that the black-cloaked man was out of Hogwarts on Death Eater/Auror business. It gave him a more than small shock to see someone else watching him. He dropped his measuring spoon into the cauldron with a splash and swore.

"Sorry," Josephine said.

Neville fished the spoon out with a pair of tongs, looked at the now-twisted metal with disgust, and tossed it onto the pile of melted cauldrons. "It's okay. I've done it before," he muttered, looking down in embarrassment. He had heard through both Lupin and Dumbledore that Josephine was an expert potion brewer—perhaps even better than Snape. Neville cherished the idea, but when faced with this mere girl he felt inferior. 

"I've done that before, you know," Josephine admitted.

"What?" Neville grunted.

"Melted cauldrons. Dropped spoons." Josephine held out her left hand, palm up. "I burnt myself with dragon's blood once."

"Only once?" Neville asked irritably, trying to rebalance the ingredients so he wouldn't have to start over. Frantically he scraped and measured, only to find the spoon that he needed was the exact same as the spoon he had just melted. He frowned and tried to work out the substitute measurements in his head.

Josephine sighed. "It hurt. A lot. I didn't want to hurt like that again."

With a hiss, the potion went flat black and stopped smoking. Neville swore and Josephine winced. "Well," Neville said in a shaking voice. "There goes that."

"I'm really sorry."

"That won't save the potion, will it?"

Josephine frowned. "Who is this for?"

"My friend," Neville replied as he dumped the brew into the sink and tossed the shriveling cauldron onto the heap of other twisted pieces of pewter.

"You're friends with a werewolf?" she asked incredulously. "You don't look," she trailed off and looked away.

"Brave enough?" Neville finished mildly. "Nobody else thought so either." He pulled another cauldron out of thin air and placed it on the table. "They were wrong too."

Josephine watched the boy, taking in his thin frame and round blue eyes that shifted constantly. He seemed too meek to stand up to a werewolf. Once Josephine thought about it, she wasn't sure she would want to be anywhere near a werewolf, especially close enough to give it a potion. Not only had this Neville boy apparently done that, he must have done it many times. "What's a werewolf like?" she asked.

"Just like us. Maybe a little tougher." Neville began measuring out the herbs again. "He's a good man."

"A werewolf is still a monster," Josephine pointed out.

"I wouldn't talk if I were you," Neville snapped, his hand shaking. "Look who you've got for a father! I would rather have Remus Lupin for a father than Voldemort!"

Josephine fell silent and watched as the older boy finished the potion. Once it was safely off the fire, she asked quietly, "Do I really look that much like him?"

Neville looked her up and down. "Yes. Most people would think you were pretty if you didn't look like such a horrible—" he broke off, red around the ears.

There was a crash. Josephine looked sharply towards the door; Neville dropped a set of measuring spoons on the floor with a horrible clatter; and Severus Snape ran in. His skin, normally sallow, had taken on a green-yellow pallor, his dark eyes so wide that the whites were completely visible. His sleek black hair had come down around his face in a matted tangle. He looked like an escapee from St. Mungo's Mental Institution.

"Get out!" he half-screamed at Neville, his voice breaking on the second word. "Get out!" Neville, his eyes rounder than ever, beat a retreat through the classroom door.

Josephine moved, putting the table between her and Snape. She watched him closely as he raised a hand as if to throw something, then pulled up a chair and collapsed into it. 

"What was it?" he muttered to himself, running his bony fingers through his tangled hair. "What was it?" His hand caught in a knot, and he jerked out a large clump of hair.

"Snape?" Josephine asked quietly. "What's happened?"

"It's—" the older man began, but his face contorted and Josephine watched in horror as his eyes bulged and his teeth ground together loudly. Snape fell to the ground with all the pliancy of a two-by-four.

Josephine, years of fearing the unknown warring with the urge to see if he had died suddenly, peered over the table. Snape looked up at her, his breathing short and quick. "What—did—he—do?" he panted. "Can't know what the brew was?"

"HE fed you poison?" Curiosity overcame fear. Josephine dashed around the table, her hair falling around her face. She peered into Snape's dilated pupils and felt the cold skin at his temples. "What was it?"

"One of yours," Snape replied hoarsely. "Brown. Fizzled a bit."

Josephine bit her lip. "More specific?" she asked. "Brown and fizzy describes a lot of things. How did it smell?"

"Bitter." He stared down at his shaking hands. "So far I've been shaky, and every few minutes I experience extreme pain somewhere here." The older man gestured to his middle abdomen.

"That's your liver, trying to process the poison. If you don't get the antidote soon, it will shut down, and all your other organs will follow, starting with your digestive organs and kidneys. If you don't get the antidote, you die in a matter of hours from total organ failure." Snape turned an unnatural shade of bottle green. "How long did HE say you've got?"

"Three days?"

Josephine raised her eyebrows. "Bullshit." When Snape looked grimly unsurprised, she asked "How long do you think?"

"Less."

"A lot less."

"You know what he wanted?" Snape asked, pushing himself upright.

"Me?" Snape nodded as Dumbledore pushed open the door, his face pursed into what seemed to be a thousand wrinkles. 

"Mr. Longbottom has just been to my office in quite a state," he said calmly. "You've been to see Voldemort, Severus?" He turned to Josephine, who was still kneeling on the floor next to his Potions professor. "What's happened, Josephine?"

"He's poisoned," Josephine replied. "I don't know what it is, but it's one of mine."

"It will work quickly, then?" Dumbledore asked.

Josephine nodded curtly, tucking the loose wisps of her hair back into her braid and rising to her feet. "HE wants me," Josephine told Dumbledore, her blue eyes like uncut diamonds: hard and facetless; flat and cold. "I suspect that he'll kill me."

Snape cleared his throat in an effort to move to his desk chair. "No," he rasped hoarsely. "I heard him talking to himself before I went in to see him. He wants an heir. That's you."

The girl looked down, her face blank. "I don't want what he can give me," she said. "I want to go home."

Dumbledore put a hand on her shoulder. "My dear girl, you _don't_—"

Josephine struck it away. "I know!" she hissed. "It's gone! Everything has been destroyed! Except, it seems, me!" She began to pace, her black robes flying behind her, and Dumbledore was floored by her resemblance to her father. "The Ministry wants me dead, because everyone on Knockturn Alley who had any glimpse of a glimmer of an idea who I am is dead. If I die then no one living will step forward and say that I really existed, that Voldemort can produce heirs. Without me, the world will keep turning, much as it has this past century, but with me Fudge's ordinary little world has been shaken! He wants me dead for his own peace of mind, doesn't he?"

Dumbledore looked directly into her eyes. "I do not know what his intentions are."

"Obviously!" she spat. "For all I know you've been fiddling with other trivial matters!"

"Like finding your mother?" Dumbledore asked.

Josephine stood stock still, her face pale as a sheet. "My mother is dead," she said quietly, "And my father is the one who killed her."

"Emily Martin was your mother in everything but blood. Your birth mother has been found. We even know where she is at this very moment."

Snape watched the Headmaster and the girl as he seemed to grow in power and she seemed to shrink, her anger giving way to uncertainty. "Who?" she asked softly.

"Her name is Jolene Longbottom. She's a patient at St. Mungo's Hospital." 

Josephine held her breath. Neville's mother? She wondered if Dumbledore knew she knew that Neville was her half-brother. Probably—she silently brought to mind the slumping, skinny boy who had defended the werewolf who was his friend. He had the saddest eyes she'd ever seen—as if the tragedy behind them was too much to say to the world.

"Neville and I look quite alike, don't we?" she asked, enjoying the surprise on Dumbledore's face. "That's what decided you."

"Your eyes," Snape croaked, his hands pressed against his stomach. "Voldemort has never had blue eyes." He turned to Dumbledore. "But Jolene Longbottom has been crazy longer than Josephine has been alive—how could she be the mother?"

Dumbledore pointed at Josephine. "You're not sixteen. We're not sure exactly how old you are, but it's far closer to nineteen. That would make you a little more than a year younger than Neville, which means that you were delivered about six months after Jolene was admitted to St. Mungos."

"That means that Neville Longbottom is her half-brother?" Snape said, his voice cracking again. He looked incredulous. Josephine was perversely amused at how much longer it had taken him to see it.

"That is correct, Severus," Dumbledore said, pleased. "And, Josephine, you and Mr. Longbottom do share some physical characteristics, thought not enough for there to be much proof."

Josephine hugged herself, determined to stay calm. When she was younger she had entertained a fantasy that her father was a gallant man and Emily was his Duchess, and Josephine had an elder brother somewhere who would come and find her and take them home to her father's grand estate. As it turned out, her father was an evil man, her mother was insane, and her brother was a thin, slumping boy with dejected blue eyes.

"You could see her if you want," Dumbledore offered, his blue eyes grave. Josephine shook her head and said nothing. "Do you want to go to bed?"

"I would like to discuss Professor Snape's condition with him, _sir_," she said coldly. "Before he keels over, if it fits into your schedule." She glared pointedly at the door.

Dumbledore glanced at Snape, his eyes amused. "Severus?" he asked, glancing at Josephine.

"I'll be fine, Headmaster Dumbledore," he said wearily.

"Right then," the Headmaster said, his eyes twinkling merrily. Josephine felt the sudden urge to pull down Dumbledore's eyelids, to hide that sparkle. She wasn't sure why it irritated her so—but it might have had something to do with the fact that everyone on Knockturn Alley had flat eyes, lacking the carbonation that this man's eyes seemed to possess in quantity. Dumbledore turned and left the room, his blue robes sweeping the ground behind him.

Snape turned to Josephine. "That was interesting," he remarked, his face paling. The girl glared at him, but supported his shoulders as he shook with the spasm caused by the poison. Josephine made herself watch as his face contorted in pain. _This is my fault_, she shouted at herself. _This man is going to die, and it's MY FAULT_.

"This is all my fault," she said.

Snape glanced over his shoulder at her. Her voice had scared him. It wasn't a plea for contradiction or a desperate cry for forgiveness. She said it calmly, just another statement of fact, just something that would not be avoided. "Really," he grunted, pressing his hand against his ribs in an effort to relieve the painful pressure in his abdomen.

"Yes," she whispered. "You're going to die, and it's my poison that's got you. My father is going to kill—has killed—to get a hold on me. He killed Emily, he killed Toad and it's my fault!" Her voice rose in pitch until it was practically a yelp. "If I had never existed, would any of this have happened?"

Her shrill demand fell on deaf ears. Snape stared at her as if she had burst into flame. "You're going to kill yourself, aren't you?"

"Would you stop me?" she demanded, whirling around in a swirl of black fabric and blacker hair. "Would you care? Maybe if I die now, I won't have to pay for any more lives in Hell." She turned to the wall, her head in her hands. Snape suspected that she had begun to cry.

"Yes, and yes," Snape murmured. "If only because you still haven't taught me anything I don't know about potions."

There was a long silence. The cold, moist air of the potions dungeon was the loudest sound in the room as it caused the tables to creak and the pewter cauldrons to moan softly like seasick souls.

Josephine turned. Her eyes were dry. "I know what to do," she said. "I'm going to need your help."

"What for?" Snape asked, mystified. 

"I want you to take me to see my father." 


	8. The Library

**Serpentigena**

**Chapter 8: The Library**

Josephine was told to wait in her room while Snape consulted with Dumbledore about her wanting to see her father. She paced for a while, back and forth in front of the fireplace, until she grew bored. At a loss for what to do, she looked around. Her eyes fell on her too-large Hogwarts cast-offs.

Hadn't Dumbledore said that Hogwarts had the largest library in Great Britian?

It didn't take her long to find it, but she spent several minutes staring in awe at the huge section of Potions nonfiction. She flipped a book down and caught it deftly, smiling in sheer feminine pleasure when no dust or grit rained down from the tops of the books. It was disappointing, however—all the potion books were for levels Josephine had covered in her adolescent years. She looked in vain for something more challenging, but there wasn't a volume she hadn't read. Having exhausted that possibility, she turned to books of basic spells.

Neville Longbottom stood in the section, leaning against one of the tall pillars that marched down the aisles. He was glaring at her.

"You—are related—to me?" he choked, his voice disgusted.

Josephine shrugged. She was hurt by his tone of voice, but she covered it in snobbish indifference. "I'm—related—to you?" she mimicked. "Sad, isn't it?"

Neville swelled like a bullfrog. "You little—" he spat. "You are possibly the most unfriendly person I've ever met."

"Popular opinion," she said flatly, crouching to peer at a row of books about dragons. "Join the herd, Longbottom. I don't mind in the least."

"Do you really think I hate you?" Neville demanded. "I don't even know you."

"Why let that stop you?" Josephine retorted, standing up. 

"Because I'm not that kind of person."

"Well guess what? I am. I am not your long-lost little sister, Longbottom. I'm scum; I'm from Knockturn Alley! I run an illegal potions shop and live in a walk-in closet with a prostitute. My best friends are people named Toad and Charcoal Sarah. You and I have nothing in common, and we probably never will!" Josephine's face was turning a brilliant red; Neville's was fast approaching white. "You have gone to school, have friends your own age, and have had two parents and a secure home all your life!"

"My parents are crazy," Neville said flatly. "My father doesn't know who I am. My mother can't stand to see me."

Josephine was silent, her fury gone. 

"When I try to hold her hand or hug her, she screams. Do you know how that makes me feel, to know that _your father_ is the one who did this to her?" Neville's ears were pink. "My father can only be expected to be in a vegetable state for the rest of his life, and _your father_ did that to him!" he was shouting now, and the sour-looking librarian was shooting them death looks from her counter.

Josephine felt cold, as if she were suspended in ice water. "I am not my father," she whispered. She stalked off to another section.

Rubbing her arms (why was she so cold?), she scanned the shelf to find something, _anything_, to get Neville's disclosure off her mind and tucked in the farthest corner of her mind possible. With a frown she bent over and pulled out a glossy, pink magazine that had been thrust between the pages of an _Yvonne's Notes: Transfiguration_. Her frown deepened as she read the title of the main article: _Make-up Tricks for the Clumsiest Witch! See page 46 for details!_

She flipped curiously to page forty-six and began perusing the glossy pages with high interest. It was perfect—she had never read anything of the sort before. After she had finished the article, she turned to the next one (_Special Effects to Liven Up! the Dullest Outfit!)_. When Snape found Josephine, she was in her room, experimenting with the spells in the magazine.

He nearly choked on the thick powder-and-flowers scent that now saturated Josephine's set of rooms.

"What in the name of all that is holy?" he asked indiscriminately, trying to stop coughing long enough to look around.

Josephine appeared in the door of the bathroom, wand in hand. One of her eyes was kohl-rimmed and mysterious, the other was bare of makeup. Her hair was more than three-quarters straight, her natural curls poking out in the top layers. "The smell is an irritating but harmless side effect," she said haughtily, her cheeks reddening at the sight of Snape. "What do you want?"

"What in the name of God or Allah or Buddha or whomever you _crazy_ people on Knockturn Alley worship are you doing, Josephine?"

"I'm doing my hair," she said flatly. "And for your information, most of the people on Knockturn Alley are atheists."

Snape blinked. Josephine used the momentary silence to whisper something and point her wand at her naked eye, leaving a small puff of nauseatingly pink and scented smoke that cleared around two kohl-rimmed eyes. Snape closed the door and leaned against the fireplace mantle, his face screwed into a position Josephine interpreted as pain or amusement. Continuing to ignore him, she began straightening out the remaining layers of her hair.

"Does this have something to do with Voldemort or are you just experimenting with your feminine side?"

"Would you go in front of Voldemort looking like you just crawled out of a sewer?"

"Three days ago you were living in a sewer."

"Just call it my feminine side and piss off."

"Okay."

There was an uncomfortable silence. Snape sat on Josephine's perfectly made bed, noticing the blankets on the rickety chair in front of the fireplace. Josephine finished her hair and began altering her Hogwarts robes with drastically static ripping sounds. Snape got up and prodded the fire, more for something to do than out of necessity. The girl slammed the bathroom door open, wearing what looked like a vulture diva's nightgown.

Snape raised his eyebrows. Josephine glared. "Their charm is faulty," she announced. "That's all I have to say."

She seized the blanket off the bed and dragged it into the bathroom. There was a puff of smoke from under the door, and the bathroom lights went out. Snape watched curiously as the door shook under a beating it was receiving from the party on the other side, and suddenly it burst open once more. This time, Josephine was wearing well-tailored (but thankfully plain) black robes that remarkably resembled the blanket.

"Better," Snape remarked. Josephine shrugged, her hair sliding off her shoulders to hang down her back. When not frizzed into curls, it was long and perfectly black. Snape, who had been sure that he had gotten over Josephine's resemblance to her father, felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. She was the image of the model Dark Witch. She glared at him with her piercing blue eyes.

"What?" she snapped. "Does it look that peculiar?"

"Oh, no," Snape said. "Flu powder or Apparition?"

"Apparition. That way I won't be dizzy at the end of the trip." Snape nodded, and raised his wand to transport them both to Voldemort's meeting room. 

Before he brought his arm down, Josephine leaned in close and whispered in his ear, "Don't think for a minute that I'm doing this for you." 

The Potions Professor nodded once more and brought his arm down with a crack that seemed to displace the world around them. The walls swirled and shifted, and stopped abruptly in a dark-paneled room with a tall marble fireplace and a crowd of masked figures. They all drew in a long breath at the sight of Snape and Josephine, and simultaneously their eyes all darted from Josephine to a dark paneled door and back again.

One of the figures stepped forward, leaning heavily into his walking stick. He offered a hand to the girl. "Josephine Riddle, I presume?" his voice was low and breathy, and when Josephine shook his hand it was cold as death and clammy. She withdrew her hand quickly. "Welcome to your father's house." 


	9. Her Father's House

Serpentigena 

**Chapter 9: Her Father's House**

Josephine stared haughtily above the heads of the Death Eaters assembled before her, her imposing profile highlighted in the dim room. She stood alone at the front of the room (Snape had joined the ranks of the Death Eaters), awaiting Lord Voldemort. Behind her back, where no one could see, her hands twisted and fretted, her knuckles sore from clenching her thin fingers together.

_It won't work_, she thought. _He knows evil backwards and forwards—how could I do anything he hasn't expected?_

Josephine pinched the back of her hand with her nails to stop herself from jumping in fright as a door she hadn't seen slammed open behind her. She made herself take two deep breaths before turning slowly. She kept her face bored and her eyes high.

Voldemort inhaled with a happiness/fury that made Josephine's hackles rise. "My daughter," he said, his mad red eyes glinting, "I am so delighted that you've decided to return to me." He had Satan's eyes: black cat-pupils expanded and contracted with a life of their own, and their glassy red irises had taken over the whites of his eyes, so that the hard cold jasper of eyes stopped at the edges of his lashless lids and was surrounded by the hard white skin of his face. The bones in his cheeks were so pronounced that he seemed skeletal in appearance, and yet the skin seemed like it was scaly.

"Dear father," Josephine said clearly, taking three steps forward so that she stood in front of him. "I am delighted at your invitation." Next she was supposed to bow—the Death Eaters held their breath, Voldemort bore down on her with his eyes—but Josephine kept Toad's broken body in her mind and gave Voldemort stare for stare. He waited for a few seconds, and then smiled. The malicious crescent of his lips shone out over the Death Eaters like a dying moon.

"It is my wish that all of my Death Eaters recognize that this girl is my right and lawful heir, bound to me by my blood and the blood of Salazar Slytherin. You will pay your respects to her, or you will be killed." Voldemort laughed like an out-of-tune violin: a skittering of the bow on the highest strings—then silence. "Now, if you please."

One by one the Death Eaters approached and kissed the hem of Josephine's robes. She watched their genuflecting impassively. There was a thrill behind it—would these men have bowed to her before they knew who she was? —but a terror as well. This blind obedience was frightening, this total devotion to Voldemort. He said to kiss her robes, and they did, without hesitation or doubt.

She glanced down to see Snape crawl forward and reach for her hem. Without changing her expression she twitched it out of his grasp. Josephine didn't want him to show this kind of respect to her. He didn't know what she was about to do… Snape bowed his head low—he didn't meet her eyes. As he went back to his place in the semi-circle, she could see that his face was twisted in pain; he had not received his payment for bringing her back to Voldemort.

"Dear daughter," Voldemort said, staring deep into her eyes, "We must discuss the future." He grabbed her arm with long fingers—his hand was nearly doubled up around her upper arm—and guided her into the next room.

This room was also paneled with dark wood, but there were subtle differences. The floor was cold stone, without a rug or carpet to warm the feet. The enormous fireplace held a fire that crackled and snapped high above both of their heads, and there was a long black table that held at least five hundred bottles. A log in the fireplace snapped, showering the floor with a fine carpet of orange sparks. Voldemort slammed and locked the door.

"Those are mine," Josephine said. She moved her eyes toward the bottles on the table, keeping her hands clasped in front of her. 

"Not anymore," he said, smirking at the table. "They have been useful to me."

Josephine turned away from his cold gaze to stare into the fireplace, and she nearly gasped aloud when she saw her enchanted rose in a vase near the hearth. It was framed in its perfect red glory by the towering flames. It was preserved by the potion of Eternal Sleep that Josephine had painted on it the day she had found out that she was the daughter and heir of Voldemort.

"That rose is also mine," she whispered. 

"Not anymore," Voldemort replied. He placed a hand on the table, his eyes narrowed to bloody slits. "Why did you come back?" he asked. "Tell me the truth or you'll be sorry."

Josephine clasped her hands behind her back. _Does he know the rose is enchanted?_ "I had plenty of time to think when I was locked up inside Hogwarts," she began slowly, infusing her voice with the same mixture of hate/fear she had first felt when she awoke in the Hospital wing. "Dumbledore only wanted me dead—he wasn't interested in me, just in my bloodline." She moved toward the rose; traced a circle around the lip of the vase. Voldemort watched her impassively. _Does he know?_ "I knew that when I ran from you on Diagon Alley, I had run away from ruling the world. So I've come to take my seat as your heir."

Voldemort chuckled. His voice was like pebbles hitting a tin bucket. "And the fact I poisoned Snape has nothing to do with it?"

Josephine forced a laugh. "Please, dear father. He is a man—and men are disposable. You could find another with his talents without effort." She lightly brushed the petals of the rose with her fingertips.

--

Neville burst into Dumbledore's office. "Where did they go?" he gasped. "Josephine and Snape?"

Dumbledore blinked in surprise. "Mr. Longbottom," he said slowly. "It really isn't any of your concern—"

"I think—know that she's going back to Voldemort, and you're just letting her go?" Neville asked, lowering his voice so that he was talking normally. "You _can't _just let her go back…he'll kill her!"

Dumbledore sighed and folded his hands on his desk. "Mr. Longbottom, I do not believe that Voldemort will kill her or I wouldn't have let her go. She's going to save Snape's life." He pulled open his desk drawer and handed Neville three pictures: Josephine's Mona Lisa shot, his mother's Quidditch picture, and Tom Riddle's school picture. "I want to give you these. You may do with them as you wish."

Neville was silent as he gazed at each picture in turn. He glanced from Josephine to Jolene several times, but stared at Tom Riddle's the longest. Without speaking he got up and threw the photo into the fireplace. He pocketed Jolene's photo and handed Josephine's portrait back to Dumbledore. "If I had a choice I would want her to come back, but I don't think either of us will see her again," he told Dumbledore.

Dumbledore watched the pattern of branches outside the window. "Neither do I, Mr. Longbottom."

"I wish her luck where ever she is. She was a decent sort."

The old Headmaster smiled. "So are you, Neville."

--

Josephine picked up the rose and ran her fingertips down the sides, careful not to prick her finger on one of the wickedly sharp thorns. "This is the most beautiful thing I have ever made," she said blandly, glancing sideways at the skeletal man across the room. The silence in the room was oppressive, the waiting was becoming unbearable.

"Beauty is useless," Voldemort replied. Josephine stifled a smirk as she surveyed the hairless skeleton leaning on the table. She schooled her expression to blandness immediately, but Voldemort saw. He stalked across the room and grabbed the front of the girl's robes. "Don't you think for a second that your magic will ever be as strong as mine!" he spat, his breath so rancid Josephine could nearly taste it. 

The girl shrugged eloquently. "Dear father," she said quietly, clasping her hand around his, "The thought has never crossed my mind." Which was true—Josephine's magical education in areas other than Potions was strictly practical. She shivered as he withdrew his hand from her throat. His hands were like ice.

Voldemort paced moodily in front of the fireplace. Josephine traced designs on the rose petals. She had to wait, for the time being, wait until the Death Eaters could see, and wait until the door was open.

"For your personal insignia: Should we combine the serpent, rose, and skull or leave it with the serpent and rose?" he asked, apparently out of nowhere. Josephine had seen the skull and snake motif on the arms of the Death Eaters and in the crest above the fireplace, but she had thought nothing of it. 

"I don't think I like the serpent. I was thinking that the rose could be rising from a bonfire or something," she replied, trying to sound like she'd been thinking it over.

Voldemort gave her a sharp look from the corner of his eyes. "There must be a serpent. You are the heir of Slytherin."

Josephine shrugged again. "Why not a lion? Father dearest, my mother was a Gryffindor…" she was cut off when he grabbed her by the hair.

"Gryffindor is not to be mentioned in this house! Never speak like that again, or I will be forced to kill you." He gave her a stinging slap across the face. "I will not have a sympathizing snit of a girl as my heir." He threw her across the room as easily as if she weighed nothing.

Josephine dropped the rose as quickly as she could, afraid that she would grip it too tightly and put herself into an almost-everlasting sleep. She spun on the smooth stones, her face pounding and her scalp trickling blood. For the first time since her arrival at the manor, she felt a shred of doubt. _He would kill me without forethought_, screeched a little voice in her head, the voice that felt the pain in her eye and saw the Devil in Voldemort's eyes.

"I don't believe in the Devil," Josephine mumbled to herself, sitting up with a hand on her bruising cheekbone. 

Voldemort smirked at her, and bent to pick up the rose. Josephine held her breath as his long white fingers neared the poisoned thorns. "Do you think I don't know about this?" he asked, his evil serpentine grin wide and mirthless. "How stupid do you think I am?"

It was a rhetorical question. Josephine met his mad gaze and raised her eyebrows, but said nothing.

He petted the rose, smiling. "You thought you could get the better of me, didn't you?" The girl was silent. "I'll tell you what, girl! If you weren't my heir, you would have been dead the day we met. And before you count yourself fortunate, remember that all those who defy me as you have just now are dead!"

"Is that why you killed Emily?" Josephine asked, jutting her jaw forward.

"Yes, and that idiot Toad and the old woman who sketches. Emily tried to hide from my wrath, Toad was unfinished business. The old woman was a pleasure," he smiled and stroked the rose. "The way she tried to scramble away, the death rattle—it was pure art."

Josephine had to use every ounce of self-control she had to stop from flying at Voldemort. Her face flushed with fury. Not trusting her voice to speak, she got to her feet, smoothing her hair and straightening her robes, keeping her gaze locked on Voldemort's ruthless red eyes. After she had herself under control, she said slowly, "Killing for pleasure is an unwise display of temper."

Voldemort laughed so hard that he had to steady himself on the fireplace. "Ah, little Josephine, when you've seen as many years as I you won't begrudge me a little bit of pleasure now and then, will you?" When he received no answer, he advanced on her, his smile fading. "Will you?" he demanded, reaching for her.

Josephine didn't flinch as he slammed his right hand into the wall behind her; it was the other that made her eyes grow wide. Voldemort's left hand brought the rose to her throat, the poisoned spines tickling her throat. She held her breath.

"I could kill you," he said. "Remember that as we go out to speak to the Death Eaters. Be my heir…or _be_ not at all." Josephine looked down in submission, thought she was laughing inside. _You won't have a chance to kill me, father…I just might beat you to it._ It was a variation on her original plan, but the more she thought about it, the better it seemed. 

Voldemort stopped with his right hand on the doorknob. "Now, my dear girl, you _will _present yourself as my heir should be, and together we will rule the world."

"This world and the next, father," she said, smiling cryptically. Voldemort ignored her and pressed open the door, looking outwards to the Death Eaters, half who were looking at him and half who crowded around a huddled black figure. 

"Death Eaters!" Voldemort cried, throwing up his arms in a magnificent flair of black fabric, flourishing Josephine's rose like a wand.

"He's dead!" said someone, "No, he's still breathing," replied another. "He won't wake!"

Josephine bit the inside of her cheek until it bled. She scanned the table, hoping that her guess at what Voldemort used was accurate enough to save Snape's life. The girl seized a small glass vial with a bit of clear fluid inside, and then, as an afterthought, smashed the container that held the antidote to the rose-spell. 

She walked slowly out to the room. "Father?" she said, her voice pleasant. "Do you remember what they looked like?"

Voldemort didn't turn. His attention was fixed on the Death Eaters. "Who?" he asked irritably.

"Oh, I don't know…Toad? Emily? Sarah? Neville's mother?" On the last, nearly every eye in the room turned to Josephine.

The hard white skin on Voldemort's face seemed to grow whiter. "Dumbledore told you…" he hissed, his eyes fixed on the girl standing in the doorway. "No, I don't really remember what they looked like."

"We called him Toad because his eyes were green and they bulged when he was angry. Emily was pretty enough to be a model; she had beautiful curly hair. Sarah was beautiful many years ago, but now her skin is gray. We called her Charcoal Sarah because she was so coated in it." Josephine couldn't seem to stop herself. It was as if a spigot had opened, spilling out words when she should have remained silent. "Jolene Longbottom left behind a son, a man with the saddest eyes you've ever seen. Can you see them now?"

Voldemort shook his head, seemingly bewildered. Josephine advanced on him slowly, still talking.

"Emily wanted to be in movies, but she didn't have the talent or the accent, so she became a prostitute. Toad wanted to trust, but he couldn't, because he was too afraid that we would leave him as you left him—injured and alone, dying where nobody would see or care. Sarah wanted nothing more than food and drink and a package of cigarettes every Christmas, but you robbed her of that."

"Shut up!" Voldemort said, his voice soft. Josephine stopped walking, a bare three feet from her father, her eyes cold as blue diamonds.

"And me, father? What did I want? I wanted a potions shop of my own, a bed in my own house, and maybe someday a husband and a couple brats of my own, but now none of that matters. All I want now is death," she whispered. A draft from the open door caught her hair and sent it swirling over her head. 

Voldemort reached for his wand with his left hand, holding the rose delicately in the right. "I'm happy to give you that, dear daughter," he spat.

Josephine smiled blissfully. She ran to Voldemort and grabbed him around the waist like a three-year-old. Looking up at his face, she grabbed his wrist and placed her left hand over his right. "But father, I wouldn't want to go anywhere without you."

She pressed their hands together with a force that drove the thorns deep into their palms. Blood, redder than the petals, dripped out from between their hands and spattered on the floor. For a bare three seconds, they rocked together in a silent waltz—Josephine smiling, Voldemort in shock—and then they fell to the floor, sprawling like disconnected marionettes.

The Death Eaters were dazed; they milled about uncertainly. One of the braver masked men approached the bodies, held a bare hand beneath Voldemort's flat nose. "He's not breathing," he hissed over his shoulder. "Neither is the girl."****


	10. Snow White

**Serpentigena**

**Chapter 10: Snow White**

Snape crawled forward, his stomach heaving. He had already thrown up everything in his stomach down to the acid that lined it, and was so weak he couldn't stand. Helplessly he touched the still-warm skin of the girl that he had almost let himself love, the child with the morbid humor and the love of potions that rivaled his own. His gazed trailed from her black eyelashes down her sprawled arm to her clenched fists. With trembling hands he straightened her limbs as the other Death Eaters did the same for Voldemort, untwining her hand from the thorns and the long white fingers of her father, pulling her other arm from it's wild stance. He frowned as he realized that her right hand was clamped around something: upon further inspection it turned out to be a tiny bottle, no bigger than two of his fingers, filled with a clear fluid.

Snape smiled, and downed the bottle without a second thought. Luckily for him most antidotes were basically the same, harmless if taken needlessly, but ineffective if they weren't made to counteract the poison taken. Luckily for him, Josephine knew her potions. Luckily for him, he would live.

It took a few seconds for his muscles to stop knotting. By then most of the other Death Eaters had fled or were crouched near the body of Voldemort, their fingers frantically searching for a pulse, a twitch, an exhale, _anything _to prove to themselves that the man they had given their lives to wasn't dead. Snape took advantage of their distraction to crouch near the fireplace and activate a Speaking charm to connect himself to Dumbledore's office.

Once he had leaned into the fire, he saw that Dumbledore was not alone inside his office. Neville was there too, his face contorted with something as close to fury as Neville Longbottom had ever come. "Headmaster!" Snape greeted him.

"Ah, Severus, you have news?" Dumbledore said, getting out of his chair. He floated majestically over to stand nearer to the fireplace.

"They're both dead," Snape said grimly, blinking soot out of his eyes. "Josephine and Voldemort. We need to dispose of the bodies."

"I'll contact the Ministry and have them send someone," Dumbledore replied, his eyes grave. "Voldemort will most certainly be burned, to prevent any resurrection attempts."

"I don't want the Ministry," Snape growled. Neville blinked in surprise at this uncharacteristic display of temper from the sarcastic Potions Master. "They'll put her on display, when she should at least be buried respectfully—"

Dumbledore shook his head. "I personally will see to it that Josephine is buried, Severus. If necessary, I will come down there myself and supervise the removal of the bodies."

"I would be reassured if you did," Snape said curtly, pulling his head out of the fireplace and back into the castle. The room was now completely empty of Death Eaters: Voldemort had been arranged into a more dignified pose, sitting in an armchair with his head thrown back against the headrest. His wand was in one hand, the other held a bit of green ribbon, a last vestige of Slytherin. Josephine still lay on the floor, smiling peacefully, her dark hair fanned around her head. There were no marks on her: she appeared to be in blissful sleep. One hand still clutched the rose.

"It must be enchanted," Snape thought aloud, reaching for the rose, but pulling back his hand with a snort at his own idiocy. He should know better than to reach for something enchanted, especially when he didn't know a damn thing about it! He wrapped his hands in the hem of his robes and picked it up, and then held it to the fireplace to see it better. It was still perfect, even coated with half-dried blood—the blood of Slytherin.

There was a knock on the door. Dumbledore poked his head in. "I came as quickly as I could, with a burial detail and as few Ministry workers as possible. They only want Voldemort, Severus," he whispered.

Snape nodded and threw the rose onto the fire, watching the flames lick it into nothing in an eye blink. He did his bit with the Ministry, nodding politely and helping two other men carry Josephine outside to the mortician. 

When his help wasn't needed anymore, he snuck back inside and spat on Voldemort's shoes.

Curiosity drew him into the next room, where Voldemort and Josephine had talked for those agonizing long minutes. The huge hearth was littered with the ashes of the dying fire, casting a sickly yellow light on the contents of the room: a few armchairs, a broken vase, and what seemed to be most of the contents of Josephine's potion shop scattered on a table. He walked towards it and jumped a foot when his foot crunched. 

Snape bent down and felt the broken glass, smelling a nauseating odor that reminded him strongly of—smelling salts? Frowning he ran a hand over the stones, pulling it away saturated with a clear fluid that reeked of Awakening Charms. Thoughtfully he ran his hands through the shards of glass, ignoring the tiny cuts he received from the pieces. Why was this one broken? Was there a purpose to it?

"A powerful Awakening potion…" Snape mused, picking up the pieces and dropping them, listening to the sharp little sounds they made. "Josephine broke it…or Voldemort broke it…but why?"

He closed his eyes. A crisp image of Josephine lying on the floor, looking as if she only slept, smiling blissfully, appeared on his eyelids. "As if she was only sleeping!" Snape shouted, clenching his fists around the pieces. "The Potion of Eternal Sleep!"

~~

Georgina Petersen had been a mortician for most of her life, all of thirty-seven years. Still, she was taken aback at the _freshness_ of the corpse delivered to her that afternoon. It was a girl, seemingly barely out of puberty. There was nothing wrong with her, except tiny red marks on her right hand. The man who delivered the body to Georgina had told her that the girl had no living relatives, and her guardian could not be found. Her name had been Josephine, no last name, and she was scheduled for public burial later that night.

"Buried in a hurry," Georgina muttered as she straightened the thin legs and folded the hands on Josephine's chest. "You were a pretty one," she said, reaching for her makeup kit. Georgina was tempted to make the girl up as Snow White: she had the porcelain skin, the black hair, and (when Georgina peeked under her closed eyelids) lovely blue eyes. The only thought that restrained her was that Snow White had woken up: this girl never would. 

She painted the girl's lips red, arranged her hair, and covered her legs inside the casket with a blue velvet blanket. Georgina pursed her thin lips. Something was missing. After a few minutes of thought, she added a necklace of polished jet beads to the white neck.

"There," she said, smiling victoriously. The girl may have had no one that really cared that she was dead, but she would go to the grave looking marvelous!

Georgina had turned to her next customer, an eighty-year-old man, when the door burst open behind her. She screamed and wheeled to see a disheveled man racing from coffin to coffin, his hair hanging over his face like a mask.

"Josephine?" the man cried, knocking off lids and upending coffins like they weighed nothing. "Where is she?" he demanded, his black eyes dark in his sallow face.

Silently Georgina pointed, her face turning an unflattering shade of puce.

The man grabbed the thin shoulders and lifted her out of the box, propping her up against the table. "Josephine? Wake up!" he whispered, then muttered some magical words and let go of her shoulders. The girl flopped onto the floor like a rag doll. "Damn!" the man whispered. "You've got to wake up! I can't make the restorative! You're the only one who knows how, and…" he trailed off, pulling the limp figure towards him, and rested his chin on her shoulder. 

The silence in the room was terrible and long. Josephine stayed silent, wilted inside the circle of Snape's arms. Georgina sank to the floor, her hands trembling. Snape's face, already desperate, began to melt into sadness terrible to look at.

_This is why I have no friends, _Snape cursed himself, _and this is why I don't like people! Because people are lost and can't be regained, because those you love are the favored victims of darkness_.

Josephine stayed waxy and unmoving, her thin face peaceful in a way Snape didn't understand. "You're not dead," he whispered in her ear. "I know that you're just sleeping." There was no response. Frantically he searched his mind for any other way to break the spell besides the antidote: there was none. 

"Sir…er…sir," Georgina said her voice cracking most unbecomingly. "If I may speak, that girl is…"

"Don't say it," Snape snapped.

Georgina swallowed. "All right then. Are you her guardian? I can't release her b—er, her, to you otherwise."

The man stared down at the relaxed face, seeing that the fury and anger/pain that had been written into the set of her eyebrows, the wry twist in her mouth, was gone. The cynicism she had gained layer by layer in childhood and her self-hatred had vanished, leaving only eternally peaceful sleep. It would be wrong to take that from her, somehow. "I am her guardian," Snape said without expression. "Forgive my behavior. The Ministry has only recently told me that Josephine died, and I was distraught."

"That's all right, then. I've seen worse," Georgina said, pulling Josephine out of the man's now-loose grip. She smiled reassuringly at Snape. "It's good to know that someone cares about her." She smiled, a pretty smile in such a painfully plain woman.

Snape couldn't bring himself to smile at the kindly mortician, but he managed a quick shake of her hand before he fled. His face was stone as he walked down the street. _If I walk a little harder, a little faster, I can fly away too. I can get to that place where Josephine is._ It wasn't until he was locked in his office, his face buried in his hands, that he allowed himself to cry.


	11. Hello

**Serpentigena**

Chapter 11: Hello 

It rained the day of Josephine's funeral.

Snape felt that it was fitting. He didn't mind the wet in the least as he stood by Neville Longbottom and Dumbledore as the coffin was lowered into the snug embrace of the earth. It meant that the horrible band that the Ministry usually sent to play at this sort of funerals couldn't be there, and the only sound was the murmur of the minister and the soft patter of rain as it hit the grass and the sharper plinks as it hit the black coffin. He didn't cry, much to Neville's disgust, but he bowed his head to pray, something Severus Snape loathed. He hated religion: it gave him no comfort. Remus Lupin had also put in an appearance, more for Neville's sake than anything. Harry Potter stood near Lupin, his face unreadable. 

Once they had thrown in their handfuls of dirt, the men turned to go. Harry left for his apartment in Diagon Alley, Neville and Remus went to their adjacent flats in Godric's Hollow. Dumbledore and Snape got back in the carriage to go to Hogwarts.

Albus Dumbledore knew better than to try and comfort his colleague; he knew that while some considered Snape unbalanced or uncaring, the man was in firm control of his emotions. The Headmaster was certain that this sorrow would soon pass.

Snape stared out the window as the graveyard workers placed the headstone. It read in simple letters:

_Josephine_

_1984? -2003_

The rounded curve at the top of the stone was etched with roses, and at the base, nearly under the earth, was a cauldron at full boil. Snape watched it until the carriage pulled away, getting back to Hogwarts in a scarily short time.

Neville was waiting for him in the Potion's dungeon. Snape was dully surprised at his face. It was no longer round and scared-looking, but hardened.

"Professor Snape," Neville said, brushing his hair out of his eyes. "You knew."

"Knew what?" Snape asked wearily.

"Knew that she would kill herself."

"I did," he replied. All he wanted was a long sleep without dreams. When would this boy leave? A trace of his old haughtiness crept back into his stature. "Is that all?"

"No," Neville said. His blue eyes were steady. Something had replaced the sadness in his eyes—was it anger or hope? "I want you to help me get my parents back."

Snape had to think for a few seconds before the names of the two Aurors came to him. "Marcus and Jolene? Shit, boy!" he snapped. "Don't you think I've tried? I've tried and failed many, many times." He threw his hands up in a hopeless gesture. "I would if I could, but I can't, so get out. I'm tired."

Neville smiled and held up a tattered notebook covered from edge to edge in a cramped but precise script. "Josephine didn't leave us with nothing," he said a little wickedly, openly enjoying this advantage over his once feared Potions Master. "I found several recipes of her own design that may work."

The older man scrubbed at his eyes, raked a hand through his hair, and glanced once more at the notebook. "How did you get that?"

The young man shrugged. "It's not important. Will you help me?"

Snape growled and jerked open the door to his office. "If I must. Get out." Neville smiled and bowed half-mockingly, then left, his walk strangely self-assured. "Stupid boy," Snape muttered, but his heart wasn't behind it. "Melted more cauldrons than half the world combined." _And improved the most of any student I've ever taught_. Mildly disturbed by that thought, Snape went into his office to sleep it off.

--

Jolene still had a young face, though her hair was almost entirely white. She opened her eyes with a gasp, looked at Neville and asked huskily, "Son?"

Author's Note: This is the end. I think. Anyway, there may be a sequel, but only if I'm as crazily motivated as I was for this one. I'm thinking possibly a future Neville story because I kind like where it's going, but every time I try to add something to this chapter, it comes out screwy. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it. And I'm so glad that you made it through this far! Review please!

-Raquel


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